Clear voices - Jonathan Sharlin, Ganser Gallery, Millersville University, Pennsylvania

Afterimage, July-August, 1999 by Kristy Krivitsky

Portrait Narratives by Jonathan Sharlin Ganser Gallery, Millersville University Millersville, Pennsylvania April 6-May 9, 1999

Jonathan Sharlin's installation "Portrait Narratives" combined image, text and space to recount the experiences of nine Holocaust survivors who live in Rhode Island where the artist works. Sharlin photographed each of the individuals and asked them to write about a personal experience from World War II. The portraits and texts were enlarged and printed on 3x5-foot kodalith film and hung from rows of cables stretched between the gallery walls.

While the piece was uncomplicated in its presentation, issues concerning the nature, of memory and the effects of personal history were raised through the arrangement of the installation's elements. Treating the two-dimensional film sheets as three-dimensional walls, Sharlin created a path by which the viewer could move through the piece. He also controlled the pace of that movement by altering the presentation of the survivors' testaments. Some films contained the entire text a survivor had written, while others were enlarged and cropped, rendering them abstract. For instance, words and phrases like "shot to death" and "tragedy" were enlarged and hung close to the entrance of the installation while the next film presented text on an intimate scale. This change in legibility paced the viewer through the installation.

The films acted not only as transparent walls that divided space, but also as veils that both concealed and then revealed relationships. Like wrinkles etched on the faces of survivors, the words overlapped the portraits, leaving one to consider the effects those experiences had on the individuals. But Sharlin's interest also seemed to lie in the realm of the general effects of memory as the texts were not attributed to specific persons. One could look at the surface of the work to learn about an individual's past, then look through the layers of information to consider the larger role that a personal history plays in one's life.

Even though Sharlin manipulated the texts in a formal way for the installation, the survivors' letters were available in their entirety at the gallery desk. The stories they shared expressed a variety of experiences and emotions. For instance, one woman spoke of living in Bulgaria during the war. She claimed that even though she had to wear a yellow star and could not attend school, she did not suffer emotionally because of the Bulgarian people's support. One man talked about falling in love with his future wife while in hiding and another spoke of the compassion he felt for his brother who taught him to maintain a will to live in the face of hopelessness. But these largely optimistic stories were countered by ones of utter terror. One woman told of the day in 1944 when 1200 children and 300 men were rounded up in Lithuania and taken to death camps. A witness to this horror, she expressed guilt about allowing her child to be protected by a Christian family. Another woman spoke of the morning after a snowfall when people were forced to leave their homes: and march to a train station. She watched as her mother, three sisters, brother-in-law and two-year-old nephew were sent to the gas chambers, while she and her brother were chosen to be sent to slave camps.

Sharlin's role in the creation of "Portrait Narratives" initially seemed to be that of a facilitator for the survivors' voices to be heard in public, but it was in fact more involved than this. He created an installation where memories and faces mingled, where text and image became one, a poignant, poetic statement about the nature of time and experience. His non-traditional presentation of the work did not outshine the survivors and their experiences, but instead enhanced the power of their words. Sharlin allowed his artistic presence to be felt within the work, but chose to otherwise remain silent so that others could speak. As a result, "Portrait Narratives" became not only a history lesson, but also a testament to the survival of the human spirit and the ephemeral nature of life itself.

KRISTY KRIVITSKY makes sculpture in Lancaster, PA.