DIRECT TRANSIT at Jewish Museum Vienna

The Loos House on Vienna’s Michaelerplatz in the form of a New York skyscraper as a symbol of uprooting through migration: In his project DIRECT TRANSIT, Fabian Erik Patzak interweaves his own artistic work with the story of the flight of his Jewish grandparents and great-grandparents on his mother’s side. The starting point for the profound reflection on issues such as forced displacement, inheritance and transgenerational memory were family events in recent years – from birth and death to serious illnesses – but also the strengthening of nationalism on both sides of the ocean, as well as recent migratory movements. In a showcase of the Visual Storage at the Jewish Museum Vienna, historical objects closely connected with the life of the family in Vienna before their escape in 1938 come upon painted images of objects that stand for the journey to the USA and life in the “new homeland.”

The Visual Storage has repeatedly been the site of artistic interventions in recent years. Here, where the many-faceted collections of the museum are preserved and presented, and the past and present of the Jewish history of Vienna meet, DIRECT TRANSIT tells of a family’s relationship to this city, of expulsion, of coming back and looking back.

Dr. Astrid Peterle