Experiencing Exile through Postmemory in Daniel Blaufuks’ Sob Céus Estranhos

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

Abstract

During the years before and after the outbreak of World War II, Portugal and especially Lisbon transformed itself into one of the most important even if “lesser-chronicled” (Spitzer, 2003) zones of transit and temporary asylum for many Jewish and other refugees. Over 50,000 fugitives passed through the Portuguese capital, trying to escape Nazi persecution and war. Daniel Blaufuk’s art project Sob Céus Estranhos - Under Strange Skies (2007) is a reflection of this refugee experience. Being himself the grandson of Jewish emigrants who fled from Germany in 1936 and stayed in Portugal after the war, Blaufuks’ arranges family photographs, home movies and material items related to his family and intersects them with photographs of refugees in Lisbon and archival material. By mixing documents of individual and collective memories, the artist reveals his interest in interrogating moments “when personal memory coincides with collective memory” (Blaufuks, 2014: 195). The artist arranges the images “in a kind of cinematic prose” (Blaufuks, 2012, 25), juxtaposing them with texts varying between his own family narrative, general information on the refugees in Lisbon during the war, excerpts of his grandfather’s letters and refugee memoirs and writings. The present paper aims to analyze how Blaufuks inscribes himself in a third generation of Jewish refugees in Portugal and how his identification with a “generation of postmemory” (Hirsch, 2012) informs the notions of exile and belonging prevalent in his work.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 11 Apr 2015
Event(Up)rooted & (Un)moored: Discourses of Belonging in Hispanic and Lusophone Literature, Culture and Linguistics - University of Minnesota, Minneapolis–Saint Paul, United States
Duration: 10 Apr 201511 Apr 2015

Conference

Conference(Up)rooted & (Un)moored
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityMinneapolis–Saint Paul
Period10/04/1511/04/15

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