Hi there! I’m Zephaniah, a junior at FSU in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program majoring in Studio Art. I am a recipient of The Tyler Center for Global Studies Award, meaning I’ll be doing international research as a part of my IDEA Grant. My project will specifically be taking me to Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, to study a lesser-known artist whose work is exhibited there. As the title suggests, my goal is to simultaneously combat antisemitic rhetoric and the prevalent issue of apathy towards mass tragedies and war through the use of art and storytelling.
Zephaniah Malka, Florida State University
My research centers around Charlotte Salomon- a Jewish German artist who died at age 26 in Auschwitz in 1943. The year of her death, Salomon packaged the pages and addressed them to Ottilie Moore, the owner of the villa where Salomon hid. She gave this package to a friend, allegedly telling him “Keep this safe, it is my whole life,”- a statement more true than the recipient may have realized. This work, Life? or Theatre?, is displayed at the Jewish Museum and is believed to be the largest known artwork made by a Jewish person who died in the Holocaust. The piece- sometimes referred to as a “gesamtkunstwerk” or a "total work of art"- is a multi-genre work consisting of nearly 800 gouache paintings alongside over 300 transparent overlays with accompanying text and song. These elements combine to form something between a script, a graphic novel, and a series, ultimately resulting in Salomon’s semi-fictionalized autobiography which simultaneously tracks the rise of Nazism in real-time.
Gouache works from Charlotte Salomon's "Life? Or Theatre?"
I first found Salomon’s work while scrolling on Pinterest and gravitated toward the bright colors and graphic styles. At first glance, I honestly assumed it to be the work of a modern digital artist or illustrator. Wanting to follow them, I searched up the work. To my surprise, the pages I saw were from 1940, painted by a woman in her twenties, and was one of 1,300 paintings she made over the short span of two years. Each new piece of information was more shocking than the last, and more surprising was the fact that I had never heard of her work. I decided to read excerpts of the series and found myself relating to her far more than I could’ve expected. She had studied art at university, she was a woman in her twenties, she was dealing with hereditary mental illness and complicated family dynamics and interpersonal issues. I connected with her greatly, which led me to truly be able to imagine being in a position that is usually unimaginable, in a more vivid way than I could previously.
Gouache work from Charlotte Salomon's "Life? Or Theatre?"
In recent years, there has been a noticeable, disheartening, and frightening uptick in antisemitic rhetoric. There has been a massive resurfacing of Nazi-era conspiracy theories like ‘Jewish cabals’. I have seen posts nearly daily touting this nonsense and receiving tens of thousands of likes, pop culture figures have stated the same beliefs outright. Locally, there have been multiple antisemitic incidents on our campus and across the schools in our state. I’ve had friends having to rip down posters talking about ‘numbers being exaggerated’. The normalizing of these dangerous and disgusting beliefs is deeply upsetting. I am a strong believer that empathy is a vital tool in combatting ignorance and hate. You can only be this hateful if you are deeply apathetic, as it requires dehumanizing and detaching from others. Online spaces and the influx of constant content have only fueled this, both spreading this disinformation and generally desensitizing audiences to mass tragedies. To combat this, audiences need to be guided to first-hand accounts, forcing them to connect emotionally with the stories they can relate to and therefore empathize with.
Gouache work from Charlotte Salomon's "Life? Or Theatre?"
For my research project, I will be studying, sectioning, summarizing, and relaying Charlotte Salomon’s story through gouache-based stop-motion animations. I will be publishing these videos with accompanying narration on social media to make her story more accessible both in length and location. I have previous experience publishing stop motion online and garnering an audience with a cumulative 52,000 followers, 2.5 million likes, and over 11 million views across platforms, so I strongly believe I could be successful in this endeavor. Utilizing social media is important to me as I feel I can meet disinformation and apathy in the algorithm where it's bred, hopefully disrupting this feed even momentarily. My goal is to challenge both antisemitism and the gross apathy towards victims of mass tragedies, two issues that are increasingly relevant today.
Gouache works from Charlotte Salomon's "Life? Or Theatre?"