Gazing at Eurydice: Authorship and Otherness in Bracha L. Ettinger

Anna Kisiel

doi:10.18778/2353-6098.6.02

Authors

Anna Kisiel WSB University, Poland https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8803-0145

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2353-6098.6.02

Keywords:

Bracha L. Ettinger, artist, otherness, Eurydice, Holocaust, matrixial theory, appropriation, ready-made

Abstract

A historical photograph of women and children from the Mizocz ghetto taken in 1942 just before their execution constitutes one of the most recurring motifs in Bracha L. Ettinger’s visual art. By means of her artworks, Ettinger endeavours to retrieve these women’s dignity and work through their traumas at a point when they are unable to do it themselves. Yet, one cannot ignore a number of questions that arise in the context of this kind of aesthetic practice; after all, Ettinger uses an archival photograph, taken by an anonymous photographer, and her acts of altering and decontextualising this “ready-made” material are aimed at producing a certain artistic effect. The objective of this article is to reflect on the issue of authorship in Bracha L. Ettinger’s theory and art. Having introduced two Eurydicial artworks, I proceed to unravel the status of a matrixial artist-author. In order to do so, I analyse such notions as ready-made art, matrixial Otherness, trauma of the World, gaze, and appropriation.

Author Biography

Anna Kisiel, WSB University, Poland

Anna Kisiel is an assistant professor at WSB University in Dąbrowa Górnicza. In 2019, she defended her doctoral thesis, Corporeal Aesth/ethics: The Body in Bracha L. Ettinger’s Theory and Art. She also holds an MA degree in English studies based on her dissertation entitled Tangible Trauma: Tropes of Gesture in the Context of Psychoanalytically Grounded Theories. She has published extensively on Bracha L. Ettinger’s matrixial theory. Her academic research revolves around – but is not limited to – matrixial psychoanalysis, trauma studies, photography theory, and body and femininity in the visual arts and literature.

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