Welcome to Visions and Voices of Trauma
“Visions and Voices of Trauma” (VVT) is a lecture series in which I interview artists whose work seeks to memorialize mass trauma events. What started as a passion project has grown into something much larger, with each phase—researching, communicating with artists, and editing interviews, available here.
From 2021 to 2024, I devoted the same amount of time to two previous projects, “Stories for All Ages” (SFAA), which connected GenZ interviewers with Holocaust survivors living in New York City, and “Voices through Canvas,” which comprised four of my paintings representing real survivor stories.
But in 2024, I felt I needed to learn more about how to paint the more internal aspects of their trauma, so I researched artists working in the same subjects. I reached out to these artists personally and explained why their work would significantly contribute to the mission of VVT. After hours of careful research and reflection, I formulated questions about each artist’s work and experiences to guide our hour-long interviews. I then edited the interviews before posting them to VVT’s website, accompanied by samples of the artists’ work.
VVT is not just a digital gallery; it’s a platform that allows the artists themselves––Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak, Terry Sullivan, Andy Farr, and Mindy Kupferminc––to provide crucial context to their work.
While I was conducting the interviews, I was simultaneously working on an independent research project about Art Philosophy, supervised by my English teacher. With my adviser, I chose books (Story of Art, Ways of Seeing, and ArtQuake) focusing on how artists over time have represented the ‘unseeable.’ I felt this exploration could inform my own art and my larger VVT ambitions.
Mixing what I’d learned from the VVT artists and from this independent study, I painted the 5th and final painting of “Voices through Canvas.”
Throughout this process, I’ve come to realize that the time spent isn’t just an investment in the project—it’s an essential part of honoring the voices and stories these works of art seek to keep alive. These projects are about more than just preserving history; they’re about leveraging art to ignite social change, foster empathy, and connect us to our shared humanity.
