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Krista SvalbonasSpakenberg 1, Laser cut archival pigment ink print, signed, numbered, framed2019
2019
About the Item
Spakenberg 1, Laser cut archival pigment ink print, signed, numbered, framed
Ideas of home and dislocation have always been compelling to me as the child of immigrant parents who arrived in the United States as refugees. Born in Latvia and Lithuania, my parents spent many years after the end of World War II in displaced-person camps in Germany before they were allowed to emigrate to the United States. In this series, I set out to retrace and re-imagine that history.
My family’s displacement is part of a long history of uprooted peoples for whom the idea of “home” is undermined by political agendas beyond their control. My parents’ childhood homes were impersonal structures appropriated from other civilian and military uses to house thousands of postwar refugees. They had always described this housing as temporary; I never expected to see these buildings myself. But after intensive archival research, I was able to locate, visit, and photograph many of the actual buildings on the sites of former DP camps in Germany.
Today, the buildings give no hint of the tumultuous lives of the postwar refugees, stuck in stateless limbo with no idea what the future held. To better understand and honor their struggles, I turned to archived copies of the plea letters the Baltic refugees sent to the governments of the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Page after page, they beg for food, bedding, and medical supplies, and attempt to explain the dire fate that would await them if they were repatriated to the Soviet Union.
I merge these painful accounts with the photographs through a process of burning, an echo of the traumas of war the refugees had endured. The words of the refugees now form the complete image. Eventually made entirely of lace-like text, the buildings grow fragile, inseparable from the precarious lives they housed. A composite of my own experience and the fading memories of my parents and their generation, each of these layered pieces becomes a puzzle I am struggling to complete before this near-forgotten history is lost forever.
- Creator:Krista Svalbonas (1977, American)
- Creation Year:2019
- Dimensions:Height: 8 in (20.32 cm)Width: 10 in (25.4 cm)
- More Editions & Sizes:8x10", Edition of 2Price: $900
- Medium:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Sante Fe, NM
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU134210145602
Krista Svalbonas
Krista Svalbonas holds a BFA in Photography and an MFA in Interdisciplinary studies. Her work has been exhibited in a number of exhibitions including at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Spartanburg Art Museum in South Carolina, Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston, Klompching Gallery and ISE Cultural Foundation in New York. Her work has been collected in a number of private collections, as well as the Cesis Art Museum in Latvia. Recent awards include a Baumanis Creative Projects Grant (2020), Rhonda Wilson Award (2017), Puffin Foundation Grant (2016) and a Bemis Fellowship (2015) among others. In 2022, Svalbonas will exhibit solo exhibitions of her Displacement series at Riga’s Photography museum in Latvia, The National Museum in Vilnius Lithuania and the Museum of Photography in Tallinn Estonia. She is an assistant professor of photography at St. Joseph’s University. She lives and works in Philadelphia.

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