Note from the Curator:

Today, stories of human displacement are ubiquitous, exacerbated by conditions such as climate change, increasing environmental disasters, political or sexual violence, transnational crises, and wars. People are forced to relocate to attain human rights or economic stability or to occupy a healthier or safer space, often to save their own life or the lives of their families. While global mass migration is overwhelming, every single individual has a uniquely personal narrative that must be heard, not only to remind us of how dire this issue has become but also so they can begin to heal from the trauma of their dislocation.

Jenny Yurshansky: Rinsing the Bones is a multi-layered, process-oriented, community-based project that explores the embodied, intergenerational trauma of dislocation and displacement. Born stateless to Soviet refugees, Yurshansky's own experiences led her to organize a year-long series of workshops in the greater Los Angeles area with 300-plus participants from diverse geographic locations. Participants worked with Yurshansky in different media to recount their migration stories through drawing illustrations, making hand-held paper sculptures, sewing quilts with their designs transferred onto fabric, recording their audio testimonials, and sharing their most meaningful family keepsakes. 

Yurshansky’s collaborative process has culminated in the works in this exhibition that transfer, translate, and transform the original workshop materials to construct a new meaning or metaphor.  The family migration stories sewn into quilts become Unfolding Narratives, a monumental-scale, möbius-shaped installation suspended in the main gallery that reveals cumulative and similar migration patterns.  Recorded testimonials engraved onto X-ray film called Generation Loss overlay audible memories onto shadowy fragments of the human body, where we retain trauma. In the Soviet Union these bone records were a homespun recording method used to copy and share prohibited materials. While listening to these recordings, visitors may embroider the convoluted lines of Soviet sewing patterns transferred to linen in Wayfinding, an analogy to trying to locate oneself in a new country or foreign culture. Scans of participant’s treasured mementos are replicated in bone-like 3D printed sculptures in Rinsing the Bones (Reliquary), and installed in a mirrored, metal and glass vitrine, conveying how these archival models are but an ossified reflection of familial lineage and history. Photograms on fiber-based paper of the 3D scanned keepsakes, The Fugitive Archive, hang on the walls surrounding the vitrine.  The title references not only how one is forced to flee a country but also the unstable, fleeting history inherent in an archive, while the fiber material connotes the fuzzy condition of our memories. A symbiotic relationship exists between the form, content, and titles of Yurshansky’s work to convey metaphors and construct particular meanings in this new context.

 The title of this exhibition, Rinsing the Bones, is an expression that originates from an ancient Slavic reburial rite that involved exhuming the deceased and ritually cleansing the body in sacramental wine or water while recounting the totality of their actions, good and bad, when alive to ensure that only bones remained. The belief was that if decomposition was incomplete, an unrepentant sinner could become a ghoul or vampire. The family's duty was to ensure this horror did not happen by "rinsing the bones" to release their soul. As Yurshansky has noted:   

"The phrase and custom deeply resonated with me because, without understanding who we are through the lens of our displacement, the generations of trauma we carry will haunt us. We are bound to live in reaction to these buried triggers without understanding their reasons unless we acknowledge the complexities and nuances of who we are through what our families have endured. As I have experienced in my family, these conversations are extremely difficult and sometimes require an outside catalyst of a trusted facilitator to break the silence. Through this project, I hope to do this for others."

A crucial aspect of Yurshansky’s process is how she orchestrates a multi-layered, intimate, dialogical, and participatory experience for her collaborators—she wants the opportunity to provide safe spaces for visitors to share histories, excavate memories, and explore intergenerational trauma.  She strives to share, heal, empathize, and hopefully create deeper connections within the community and the diverse personal histories of migration.

Ultimately, Yurshansky’s Rinsing the Bones examines the patterns of migration's repercussions and offers ways for people to connect themselves to that ordeal by recounting family stories. Yurshansky focuses on the gaps resulting from displacement and the complexity of the word "home" as an uncertain, unstable space located outside the frame of nostalgia.

–Karen Moss