Tara Polansky - Artist
What did you do? (detail)
2013
Hungarian Porcelain
each component 3 3/4”, overall 6’ x 3’
During my my 2013 residency at the International Ceramics Studio in Hungary, I visited a flee market in the former Jewish Quarter of Budapest where I purchased a class photograph from around the 1920s. Pictured are thirty-four mostly teen-aged students and their teachers. These young women would be adults during the time of World War II, and I anticipated the difficult choices they would face at that time. I wondered who they would become and with whom they would side. As women living during that time, they would likely have a certain amount of control over their home. When approached by their endangered neighbors, which of them would provide a hiding place and which of them would turn their neighbors away or report them?


Photo: Artist