She, Archivist is a project about womanhood, inheritance, and specifically how certain items and feelings are passed down between generations of women. The focus is on matrilineal inheritance, viewed through the lens of rituals in Judaism, and the questioning of certain traditionally accepted beliefs.
I love the handmade aspect of photography — a quality that we’ve started to lose with digital — and will often make physical objects using collage, various alternative processes, embroidery, and printing on fabric. These explorations started with observing my family’s marriage history and reconstructing my identity after an abusive marriage and subsequent divorce. I have become interested in fusing photography with textiles, as these are art forms and objects often associated with “women’s work” and classified as craft rather than fine art. These created photo-objects often take form in domestic items, such as tablecloths, or interior (domestic) installation spaces passed down in my family matrilineally.
My fascination with my family history has existed as long as I can remember. American Jewish families tend to have excellent records of immigration papers as it was required of us wherever we dispersed, and it’s ingrained to keep track of them and tell stories of the places we’re from, no matter how long you’ve lived somewhere. In important historical records containing family trees, women’s accomplishments, lives and existences are often pruned, thought of as frivolous and unnecessary to keep track of. They exist as flowers on the branch, acknowledged mainly for their role in bearing the next generation of men to carry on the family name. Their own last names aren’t always recorded. Thankfully, because of the importance of keeping full records to prove that we belong, that’s not true in my family.
There’s something about women being the keeper of memories: the mom taking the pictures, but never being in them. Maybe that’s why I make so many self-portraits, to make sure I’m being seen as I archive my family history. I disappear and reappear throughout the series, reminding you of my existence.
Photography allows us to hold on to happy memories of family and childhood that tend towards nostalgia and not always truth. Actual memories can be replaced by the photographs that come to represent them. When I combine my chosen mediums of analogue color photography, textiles, and the family archive, what truths are told? What stories can we bring forward that might have been hidden? What stories have been held silently by the women in our family lineages?
Statement from the Gallery
Lily Colman is not only an exceptional artist but also an exceptional Professor here at MCCC. She embodies two fundamentally important qualities that I look for when seeking artists to show in this gallery. First, the desire and ability to make meaningful work that is personally connected to who you are, but also can speak to a broader social idea and audience, and second, the desire to help promote others who are also making meaningful work. These two qualities are exactly what I hope will inspire our students and you, the visitor, in your creative practices.
Michael Chovan-Dalton
Gallery Director and Coordinator of Photography