Portfolios > Ghosts of Displacement

I am the daughter of a refugee. My mother’s family fled Nazi-occupied Ukraine on foot, finding their way to a displaced persons camp in Austria, finally making their way to America through Ellis Island. My father’s family emigrated, in stages, from Greece. My identity is a collage of genetics, hope, desperate calculations, luck, and survival.

Spending time with the photographs, papers, and objects that my family carried over an ocean, I am visited by the ghosts of these displaced. They are with me in each effort I make to live a life that moves beyond survival. I've created this work as a communion with these ghosts, and to share a post-war migrant experience that is both specific to my family and analogous to so many others.