San Francisco-born artist Daria Martin’s newly-commissioned installation combines computer gaming technology and film to explore the unconscious memories of her paternal grandmother who fled the former Czechoslovakia from the Holocaust. An immersive and atmospheric environment, the installation stages a series of intimate encounters with an extensive archive of dream diaries from Martin’s grandmother. Created over a thirty-five year period, these meticulously recorded accounts amount to over ten thousand diary pages, and were originally chronicled for the purposes of psychoanalysis. Her grandmother’s dreams frequently return to the curious and traumatic history of her childhood home, a modernist villa, still standing today in the city of Brno.
This multimedia exhibition includes a film created using computer gaming technology that takes users on a journey through a 3-D rendering of the villa in Brno as it appeared when Martin’s grandmother lived there. A second film, shot with actors, presents a reimagining of four of Martin’s grandmother’s dreams set within the modernist house. The installation operates simultaneously as a portrait of Martin’s ancestor, a self-portrait, and an exploration of intergenerational trauma, intolerance, migration, loss, and resilience.