Il racconto dei Mangiapatate

“Il racconto dei Mangiapatate” (“The tale of the Potato-eaters”)

The work started as an approach to Brenda Draney’s art, focusing especially on how to visually represent the blank spaces of memory.

My grandma used to tell me about the time during the Second World War when she had to hide potatoes from the nazist soldiers.
She used to rush out of the house before they came and violently shouted demanding food. “Kartoffeln” is the only german word my grandma remembers. The potato is an element she immediatly links to Germany, a means she needed to live on and to hide by the oppressors.
The elements of the story were always quite scattered, they were transmitted to me like this.

How can we keep on the remembrance of such tragic times which we witnessed just through tales?
Our memory is a personal construction, which pieces remain, which fade away?