Contact
Research Areas
Visual Art; Public Memory; Feminist Theory; Holocaust History
Education
Ph.D., Union Institute and University
M.Ed., Lesley University
B.F.A., Mass. College of Art and Design
Links
Curriculum Vitae (pdf)
Karen Frostig
Karen Frostig
Karen Frostig works as a conceptual, interdisciplinary artist engaged in international activist projects dealing with traumatic memory, inherited erasures, and new forms of testimony. She exhibits her work across the US, and in Europe and the Middle East. Her recent project “Exiled Memories” represents a transnational, inter-generational conversation about the Holocaust and is permanently installed at the University of Vienna’s Institute for the Philosophy of Law.
Associate Professor at Lesley University and Resident Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, Frostig lectures internationally and has published a series of books and journal essays about a variety of topics including visual art, critical theory, Holocaust history, feminist theory, cultural pluralisms, and new pedagogies.
Frostig’s interest in feminist scholarship, inclusive organizational structures, and transnational activism permeates her work, aligning agency with social consciousness. As Founding Artistic Director of “Orte der Erinnerung/The Vienna Memorial Project”, Frostig introduces a bold new post-conceptual framework for memorial development. Controversial by design, the project challenges prescribed habits of remembrance and fixed formulas of memorialization. Integrating collective memory with participatory experience, memory is performed as a cultural encounter, negotiating the past with the present and the future.
Current Projects
My scholarship is focused on developing a new temporary memorial project in Vienna, “Orte der Erinnerung/The Vienna Memorial Project,” to be installed in Vienna beginning on May 2013, and running for one year. The memorial marks the 75th anniversary of the Anschluss. The research combines rigorous archival research with radical artistic intervention.
Representative Publications
Frostig, Karen.“Arts Activism: Praxis in Social Justice, Critical Discourse, and Radical Modes of Engagement.” In Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 28(2), (2011): 50-56.
Frostig, Karen and Kathy A. Halamka, eds. Blaze: Discourse on Art, Women and Feminism, 2nd edition. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.