LOS ANGELES, CA.- The recent rise of white nationalism, anti-Semitism and hate crimes prompted three Los Angeles artists, whose mothers were Holocaust survivors, to come together in a group show. In Inherited Memories, opening May 18 at Castelli Art Space, Shula Singer Arbel, Dwora Fried and Malka Nedivi confront the viewers with the power of memory and remind us of the generational effects of trauma.

"More to the point," says Peter Frank, "the mothers of these three women went through the ordeal, profoundly impacting their daughters and the art they make. The work of Shula Singer Arbel, Dwora Fried, and Malka Nedivi, however, manifests more than a simple acknowledgement of the tribulations their mothers underwent before giving birth to them: it embodies sensations experienced one way by the elder women themselves and another by their offspring. It is in this experiential slippage that the art finds its eloquence; and it is in the three artists’ diverse stylistic and discursive approaches that the exhibition finds its resonance.

The work of each artist tacitly denotes a different temporal relationship to the devastating event. Fried’s assemblages reflect on the normal life led by her mother’s family in prewar Krakow and the “post-normal” life her own family led in postwar Vienna– what was lost. Arbel’s paintings are based on photographs from the Bavarian Displaced Persons Camp where her parents met after the war – what was gained back. And Nedivi’s sculpted figures and objects muse upon the dysphoria her mother experienced in a painful present – what could be survived but not tolerated.”

Shula Singer Arbel was born in Israel and moved to Los Angeles at the age of three. She received an MFA degree from UCLA in Film Production and worked for many years in the film industry as an editor, writer, and researcher. Arbel was the first recipient of the Barbra Streisand Screenwriting Award. She wrote and directed short films, showing in the independent film circuit in the United States and Europe. After leaving film, she returned to her original love: painting. She is now a full-time artist and a member of the Los Angeles Art Association, Women Painters West, and the Jewish Artists Initiative. Shula received the Best of Show Award in the 2010 Gold Medal Exhibition at Valley Institute of Visual Arts (VIVA).

Dwora Fried is an assemblage artist creating mixed media sculptural spaces in wooden boxes. Her small rooms evoke what it was like to grow up as an outsider in postwar Vienna: being Jewish, lesbian and a child of Holocaust survivors, she learned to see everything through the prism of loss, danger and secrecy. Dwora studied art at Avni School of Fine Arts in Tel Aviv, Israel. She has had solo shows in London, England, Venice, Italy at the Jewish Museum, Vienna, Austria (her art is in the permanent collection of Austria’s MUSA Museum ) and Los Angeles, California. She has exhibited in Chicago’s Elmhurst Art Museum, Grafiska Sällskapet in Stockholm, Sweden, San Francisco’s Arc Gallery and Orange County Center for the arts. Her work was shown at Launch LA/Korean Cultural Center, Irvine Fine Arts and the newly opened MASH gallery in Downtown LA. Her life size interactive installations were part of her solo show at the Los Angeles Art Association and a political group show at Fullerton College Art.

Malka Nedivi is an artist living and working in Los Angeles. She was born in Rehovot, Israel in 1952, an only child to parents who survived the Holocaust and emigrated from Poland. Studying Theater and literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, she directed plays and taught theater. Recently Malka had a successful solo show at the National Council of Jewish Women, had a solo exhibition at BOA Art Gallery in Los Angeles, and was featured in the LA Art Show at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Malka was also chosen as one of the top ten Southern California Contemporary Artists from Israel at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. Malka has had write-ups in the Beverly Press, Jewish Journal, Diversions LA, Filling the Negative Space, Tribe Journal, Trebuchet Magazine and she is the subject of a feature in the Huffington Post.