An artistic research project exploring the history of my family during the Holocaust.
Bezirksmuseum Mariahilf, Mollardgasse 8, 1060 Vienna
September 2025 – June 2026

Where to begin?

The history of the Schick family cannot be told in a linear fashion; it is scattered across documents, snippets of stories, photographs, addresses, police records and city archives. Between the fragments, traces and gaps, there is no clear beginning.

How can one tell a family history whose central voices have fallen silent? When the archive becomes a place of listening; for traces, for subtext, for what has been omitted. But the archive cannot replace memory; it speaks in fragments, while art attempts to connect these fragments.

When examining my family's photographs, the question of their truthfulness arises time and again. Roland Barthes describes photography as a trace of what has been, as evidence of a past reality. But for me, the question remains open as to whether it always bears witness to what actually was, or whether it is not rather a place where memory, imagination and desire merge.

The exhibition space in the district museum thus becomes a ‘camera lucida’ – a place where light falls on the past. As in photography, the focus is not on the true representation, but on our subjective truth. It is a balancing act between knowledge and perception, between closeness and distance.
The research process is thus transformed into a form of exposure in which documents, objects and memories gradually become visible. These are not evidence in the historical sense, but traces that keep the past present without codifying it.

When does a trace become a source, and when does it remain a fragment?
What distinguishes evidence from interpretation?
How much interpretation can a document bear?
What does a building tell us about its former inhabitants when it no longer exists?
What significance do material traces have for our understanding of history?.

These questions accompany my work during my residency at the Mariahilf District Museum, a growing space for remembrance, research and questioning that unfolds between art and archive, between the private and the public.
 

I would like to thank Marcus Bruckmann, the museum's director, for giving me a voice.

More Infos: https://familieschick.wordpress.com