Heavy Curtain
What initially appears to be a harmless piece of interior décor, childlike and even playful, on closer inspection turns out to harbor problematic and painful issues.
“Heavy Curtain” is a curtain collage of recurring motifs in children’s drawings that Laufer found in the archives of Kibbutz Hazorea, Israel. The drawings were created by second-graders during the Israeli Holocaust Commemoration Day in the mid 1980s. Pencil and pen lines in black and yellow reflect poignant truths. Mothers holding babies mingle with wilting flowers, rain mixes with tears. People standing up seem to be sad, while those lying down--presumably--dead, smile. Stars become Stars of David and turn into the Nazi-connoted yellow “Judenstern.” Swastikas seem to be the motif again and again. If a curtain frames the way the outside world can be viewed from inside, “Heavy Curtain” frames the inner-worlds of the children, their visual vocabularies and how their worldview was shaped. The distressing drama with which the “third generation” grew up unfolds with the curtain; it unravels and reveals the challenges of remembrance and education, of clichés and stereotypes.
A curtain offers a private and intimate atmosphere, yet is also reminiscent of a theatre curtain, reminding us that the personal is political. Private stories are staged in a manner in which it is impossible to separate truth from fiction. A curtain usually frames what the public will see. It stands for the construct through which we view and experience the world, or in this case, how these children viewed and experienced their world in that particular time and space.
