Description
This painting depicts Leah Michaelson’s memorial of lament entitled “Silent Cry” which is installed at Yad Vashem, the living memorial of the Jewish people to the Holocaust situated in Jerusalem, whose mission is to safeguard the memory of the past and impart its meaning to future generations. As James E Young has said:[1]
“At Yad Vashem, the Holocaust marks not so much the end of Jewish life, as it does the end of life in Exile. The Shoah is redeemed by the founding of the State”
Abigail’s painting faithfully reprises the figure of the memorial, a tall and imposing female figure standing grieving silently on a pile of pebbles that Jews traditionally place on graves. The monument’s message is an intense silent lament for the millions of Jews who perished in the Shoah who will always be remembered in Israel. Abigail has added two figures of herself standing before the memorial holding her arms aloft in mourning and progressively releasing a series of two-winged angels into the heavens, each encased in a tear, where they disperse among a sky filled with numerous barely discernible heads that represent the souls of the millions of dead victims. At the top left a phoenix, a symbol of resurrection, rises up towards an angel, in the middle; while on the right the head of a weeping couple within a mandala soars above the clouds of souls.
[1] James E Young, 1994:31
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