INHERITED IMAGES

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This series is based on family photographs, primarily from my mother’s side as part of my

exploration of my Jewish refugee history, that started when I adopted my great grandfather’s name - Pushka - in a deliberate act of possession.

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The one exception in this series comes from my father’s side: a large canvas made from several photographs of Christmas gatherings. Unlike the inherited photographs, here I had both the snapshot, and the texture of lived memory. The work carries the celebratory atmosphere of Christmas, but also the subtle undercurrents of experienced family tension.

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Together, these paintings explore two kinds of relationship to the photograph: one mediated through memory, the other through absence and inheritance. Their photographic origins remain visible in their space and composition, but painting transforms them into meditations on how images transmit biography, ancestry, and the layered ways memory is held.