Som Chai meets my family & friends
I am so excited that Som Chai is now in Oz and has been granted a partner visa.
He's met my family and friends, and even come along to Uni with me.
It is wonderful having him here with me - no more lonely nights or awkward outings on my own!
I can throw my wish list in the fire now because he fulfils all my dreams. I am so proud of him - he is charismatic, generous and kind, and he is also Budhist and a meditator!
I wondered whether there was a difference between art made by a human and art made by a machine? So I made a fan that painted, and I became a painting human fan.
Conclusion: there was no difference.
Just an Ordinary Peasant is based on my uncle’s experience as an inmate at Treblinka extermination camp in 1944. His memoir recounts that while being forced to carry corpses from the gas chambers to an open-air pyre, he was handed a sack which held little children who were still alive. The guard commanded the sack be thrown into the fire. The woman I play in Just an Ordinary Peasant is a hybrid character created from the memoirs of my uncle, my parents and my own research. She sings and dances and also throws a sack of babies into the fire. This piece explores my own biases as well as questions the culpability of ‘ordinary people’ who were accomplices to the atrocities carried out during the Third Reich.
A Time to Mourn, A Time to Dance
A Time to Mourn, A Time to Dance is a short film narrated by my mother, Marysia Kohn. It is based on a memory from 80 years ago while she was an inmate at Auschwitz concentration camp. Her story focuses on a small gesture of kindness from a stranger which restored her faith in humanity.
This act, in the darkest of places, has been her guiding light and has become a symbol that there is still hope for humanity
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Marysia was 101 years old at the time of making this film and will be 102 (tfoo tfoo) on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, 2025 (October 2025)