Return to "In The News"The San Francisco Examiner—Tuesday, April 3, 2001
COLORED MEMORIES
Pictures and voices speak
eloquently against social injustice
By Anne CrumpFor Barbara Shilo, painting in color is one way to take a swing at social injustice.
Her series, "Silent Voices Speak," offers a different perspective on the Holocaust by infusing historically black-and-white images with life-inspired color. The series anchors a free exhibition and lecture series of the same name at Herbst International Exhibition Hall in the Presidio through May 15.
What began as a personal project to address her own feelings abut the Holocaust grew into a major program sponsored by 89 different organizations exploring social injustice past and present and featuring lecture panelists like Dorothy Ehrlich, executive director of the American Civil Liberties union; former government advisor Daniel Ellsberg; actor Ed Asner; New York Times photo-journalist Dith Pran; Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos Horta; Chinese dissident and activist Harry Wu; as well as historians, professors, Holocaust survivors and a variety of musical and theatrical performers.
"The purpose was to focus on broader themes," Shilo says. "Social injustice is going on today; it didn't stop with the Holocaust."
For Shilo, however, the Holocaust is where social injustice started. She was born in Germany and lived in the Sudetenland between Germany and Czechoslovakia before fleeing to the United States with her family in 1938. She was only 5 at the time, but she still remembers the charged political atmosphere.
"The scenery had suddenly changed," she says, recalling that she and her schoolmates were brought to watch increasingly frequent parades of soldiers in the streets. "It was frightening."
Shilo was one of the lucky ones. Though she later learned that members of her father's family were among the victims of Hitler's "Final Solution," she and her immediate family were able to escape before the genocide began.
Living in the United States, her parents never talked about the Holocaust. But it was always lurking in the back of her mind.
"It was like a ghost in a closet," Shilo explains. "It stayed with me over the years, festering."
In 1997,the then 64-year-old artist began thinking about how to approach this subject artistically.
"When the idea came to me, it was so insistent," Shilo says. "I tried to ignore it because it was a scary subject, especially because I was not a true survivor. I didn't feel like I had the right to address it."
She researched the history in great detail, poring over hundreds of photographs in the process. She decided to paint 10 paintings—which ultimately became 14—all based on actual historical photographs.
"I didn't want to use any fiction. I wanted it to be a documentary kind of art," Shilo explains, adding that she chose subjects that chronicled the events of the Holocaust. "It is a journalistic story translated visually to allow empathy.
"Color was the most important element," she says. "Our perception was in black and white, but we don't live in black and white. By using color, I was putting life into those individuals."
Her next step was to figure out the best way to exhibit the work. When she found Herbst Hall, she realized that her 14 paintings would be lost in the enormous space, unless others could be persuaded to exhibit with her.
Another concern was luring people to a venue they are not accustomed to visiting.
The first addition to Shilo's exhibition of paintings was "Visas for Life: The Righteous Diplomats," a historical photographic exhibition celebrating individuals who facilitated rescues during the Holocaust, curated by Eric Saul.
Next came the idea for a lecture series that would both complement the two exhibitions and expand upon their themes, illustrating their contemporary relevance.
"It was not at all difficult to find people to participate. Nobody turned us down," Shilo notes.
She hopes that visitors will come away from the exhibition with "a deep sense of compassion for the fragility of life and how thankful and grateful we have to be to live in a free world." It is also important that we gain understanding for what people have suffered at the hand of injustice, she adds.
"It's important to cross that threshold and the more you go into it, the less you lose the fear. "We must examine how people get to that place where they think it's OK to snuff out another human life. It's a study that we should not forget," Shilo says. To ensure that visitors experience the exhibition to the fullest, the program includes a slide show offering historical background, as well as daily docent tours.
The final lecture in the series, "Confronting Genocide in Today's World," will be recorded for airing on local and nationwide radio, including 225 National Public Radio and commercial stations.
For Shilo, the most significant element of the "Silent Voices Speak" exhibition is the anticipated attendance of more than 2,500 children.
"If we can teach this message to children today, they can carry it on, she says. "They will have a new sense of history, so they can spread positive information."