My name is Sara

Image: Video still from For Leopold, 2021. An installation of 10 videos. © Sara Davidmann

Four Corners was delighted to host My name is Sara, an exhibition by Sara Davidmann drawing upon themes of family, post-memory and the Holocaust. 

"My name is Sara draws upon themes of family, post-memory and the Holocaust.

Davidmann discovered a family album of photographs and handwritten notes in German (never before translated), that tell a story her father was never able to tell - of the German Jewish side of her family.

Davidmann’s father, Manfred, and his sister Susi survived the Holocaust by
escaping from Berlin on the Kindertransport, arriving in Britain in 1939.

The photo-album belonged to Davidmann’s aunt Susi. Early photographs show a family life of seaside holidays, weddings and Berlin outings – a family Davidmann had not known existed.

Realising that many of these people did not reappear in photographs taken after World War II she searched for traces of their lives. She uncovered over 130 pages of Nazi and official documents. These revealed that family members were deported to, and murdered, in concentration camps at Auschwitz and Theresienstadt. Others survived by escaping to Shanghai and France, and by living hidden in Berlin with false documents.

At the same time – parallel to making these discoveries, Davidmann used photography and video to make artworks using the material she was uncovering. Recognisable objects – hair, family photographs and Nazi documents appear in the artworks – only to be disrupted by elements of fire and erasure. This is the first exhibition of this work."

An artist’s book, Mischling 1, published by GOST, accompanied the exhibition. 

EVENTS

Sara Davidmann In Conversation | 14 September 2021 | 7 - 8.30pm | Online
Artist Sara Davidmann and curator Katy Barron discussed key themes from the exhibition. 

PARTNERS 

The exhibition was supported by a Philip Leverhulme Prize awarded by The Leverhulme Trust, The Association of Jewish Refugees, Cockayne Grants for the Arts, and London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.