Nina Keri

Displaced Persons built on Nina's last two exhibitions, Auslander and Dunkel und Hell. It continues her exploration into the matriarchal, general stories of  Grandmother's life in the Ukraine and Austria during and after World War Two. 

'My paintings are based mostly on stories that I gleaned from my Grandmother years ago. I use these stories as a vehicle to explore and to try and understand the loss in my maternal line; the loss of family and place, culture and the trauma of displacement. And as always I endeavour through my artwork to honour the lives lived before me, to uphold and respect their incredible survival.'

This new series of paintings by Nina is dedicated to those ancestors and family that came before her and it is in honour of the lives they lived and the stories that have been handed down.

Dunkel und Hell was exhibited at Sidespace Gallery from Friday 21 August 2015 for two weeks.

Auslander was the culmination of two years work, exploring the curious childhood stories and characters that were created by Nina's grandmother. The characters are whimsical, yet there is a darkness about these works that comes from a history of war, famine and tragedy. In this exhibition Nina Keri explored the emotional world of her grandmother's life in the Ukraine during the Second World War. 

“When people experience trauma, in my family’s case the trauma of war, there is not always a space to heal or even think upon the experiences. Efforts go into surviving. Years pass and the experiences are covered by layers of living. But sometimes stories are told, remembered, passed on."

"My paintings feature two of my grandmother's pets, Svyinka the pig and Bobik the dog. I have listened to stories about them since I was a child. In my work they take on human qualities, which enables them to enter the human world of that time. And some humans I paint take on the visage of animals. Some paintings are like snapshots, others are created with many layers of generational emotion. My grandmother's stories are like a frayed rope linking my grandmother, my mother and me. When I paint I go to the place of the stories, they allow me access to a fairytale-like world full of extremes of good and evil. I use the stories and characters to tell of deeper emotions and experiences that have laid dormant in my maternal line. In doing so I hope to bring honour and an acknowledgment to the lives that came before mine”.

The Auslander Exhibition opened in early 2014 at the Sidespace Gallery in the Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart, Tasmania. It was the debut solo exhibition for Nina, who was overwhelmed by the response to her work. Most of the paintings were sold within a few days.

Copyright for all images remains with Nina Keri.

Review of Auslander by the late Tasmanian writer, Thomas Connelly 2014

Nina Keri has been prolific in producing artworks over the past five years, focusing on three major exhibitions. Here is a small selection of other works that have sat outside of the exhibitions. All rights reserved.

Haystacks are a fragile and fleeting presence on the landscape, coming from the earth, returning to the earth, given in sustenance to others. When I first came across images of haystacks in Eastern Europe, I was struck by their human physicality, all be it a frozen and shrouded one. The human comparison was intriguing to me. The image of the haystack engenders a sad and forlorn feeling, again because of its human like presence, and more so when one individual haystack is contemplated in the landscape

Initially I was inspired to use the haystacks as vehicle for storytelling and for understanding family history through the narrative of passed down stories. I thought about why haystacks have such a strong resonance with me. To me they look and feel like an ancient and maternal presence, connecting to ancestral harvests, going back hundreds of years. Maybe my Grandmother during her childhood in the Ukraine helped gather the hay and construct haystacks with the family.

My haystacks are searchers of the physical world, and can journey to all the places of my choosing: cities, villages, the countryside, forests, abandoned buildings, looking for evidence of what remains of my ancestral past. A past de-constructed and re-constructed out of the events of the Second World War.

It has become increasingly evident to me that the haystacks that I paint, and the environments I place them in, are also about an emotional state. My artwork is revelatory of deep emotional, spiritual and mental states of being.

In my work I continue to use recycled board and other materials. Their imperfections and past lives have their own wounds and stories which add to mine. I have also used old mirrors, the obscuring and revealing effect they have adds tension to the pieces.

My exhibition will show work that features a journey taking place through the animated haystack, a symbol of paternal ancestry, which now includes me.