Abstract

The ways in which we remember the Holocaust individually and collectively remains a topic of critical consideration in the current day and age. Issues related to Holocaust memory have been taken up by scholars and artists alike, who question the role of remembering this history and its mediations. Examining the practices of contemporary artists Rafael Goldchain and Angela Grossmann, this thesis explores how imagined realities fit into to the processes of memory, and what their implications are for post-Holocaust art and life. The relationship between memory and the construction of personal identity is also taken up here, with a questioning of how memory (including imaginatively-mediated memory) becomes involved in the processes of personal, familial and cultural identification. This thesis will argue that alternative forms of memory work, with a focus upon imagining as remembering, are a necessary and productive means of working through the ongoing consequences of the events of the Holocaust, among the children and grandchildren of survivors who must negotiate their identities in relation to these personal and collective pasts.