El altar de mi bisabuelo/​My Great Grandfather’s Altar, from the series Santos y sombras/​Saints and Shadows

Muriel Hasbun, El altar de mi bisabuelo/ My Great Grandfather's Altar, from the series Santos y sombras/ Saints and Shadows, 1997, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Moore, 2005.3.5, © 1997, Muriel Hasbun
Copied Muriel Hasbun, El altar de mi bisabuelo/ My Great Grandfather's Altar, from the series Santos y sombras/ Saints and Shadows, 1997, gelatin silver print, image: 17 5⁄8 x 13 3⁄4 in. (44.7 x 35 cm) sheet: 19 7⁄8 x 15 7⁄8 in. (50.5 x 40.3 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Moore, 2005.3.5, © 1997, Muriel Hasbun

Artwork Details

Title
El altar de mi bisabuelo/​My Great Grandfather’s Altar, from the series Santos y sombras/​Saints and Shadows
Artist
Date
1997
Location
Dimensions
image: 17 5⁄8 x 13 3⁄4 in. (44.7 x 35 cm) sheet: 19 7⁄8 x 15 7⁄8 in. (50.5 x 40.3 cm)
Copyright
© 1997, Muriel Hasbun
Credit Line
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Moore
Mediums Description
gelatin silver print
Classifications
Subjects
  • Still life — art object — photograph
  • Object — written matter — book
  • Object — other — candlestick
  • Object — other — crucifix
Object Number
2005.3.5
Linked Open Data
https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2005.3.5

Artwork Description

These works recover shards of a past lost to forced migration, assimilation, and genocide. Muriel Hasbun was born in El Salvador to a Salvadoran Palestinian Christian father and a French Polish Jewish mother, who as a child survived the Holocaust. Hasbun fled El Salvador at the start of the country's civil war in 1979, continuing her family's history of exodus and fragmentation. She addresses this history through a practice that combines archival research with photography.

The X post facto (équis anónimo) series is based on an archive of x-rays discovered in her father's office. As a dentist, he was often asked to use his archive to identify bodies of the victims of civil war--sometimes his own family. The layered images in the series Santos y sombras/Saints and Shadows allude to her grandfather's Greek Orthodox faith and her own Catholic upbringing. Hasbun arranged visual fragments in an altar-like manner, with a kaleidoscopic repetition of religious motifs: crosses, votive candles, and prayer books.

Description in Spanish

Hasbun capta fotos dentro de fotos y superpone múltiples exposiciones en una sola copia para examinar los sucesos que obligaron a su familia a migrar. Las fotografías colocadas a manera de altar conmemoran a sus antepasados. Entre ellas, la foto central muestra a su bisabuelo frente al retablo ortodoxo griego que construyó en El Salvador después de huir de Palestina. La otra fotografía aquí exhibida es un retrato etéreo de Ester, su tía judía, quien sobrevivió la ocupación nazi en Francia.

Nuestra América: la presencia latina en el arte estadounidense, 2013

Related Books

OurAmerica_500.jpg
Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art
Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art explores how Latino artists shaped the artistic movements of their day and recalibrated key themes in American art and culture. This beautifully illustrated volume presents the rich and varied contributions of Latino artists in the United States since the mid-twentieth century, when the concept of a collective Latino identity began to emerge. Our America includes works by artists who participated in all the various artistic styles and movements, including abstract expressionism; activist, conceptual, and performance art; and classic American genres such as landscape, portraiture, and scenes of everyday life. 

Exhibitions

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Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art
October 25, 2013–March 2, 2014
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art presents the rich and varied contributions of Latino artists in the United States since the mid-twentieth century, when the concept of a collective Latino identity began to emerge.

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Eye Level, with the help of former intern Becky Harlan, had a chance to speak with photographer Muriel Hasbun about her artistic roots and her current process. Her work appears in the current exhibition, A Democracy of Images: Photographs from the Smithsonian American Art Museum as well as Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art.
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Artist and educator Muriel Hasbun is a member of the largest Latino community in the greater D.C. region. Hasbun grew up in El Salvador and settled here as a student in the 1980s. She is now department chair and associate professor of photography at the Corcoran College of Art + Design. Hasbun's personal history and artistic development speaks to a larger Salvadoran experience of migration and endurance in the midst of adversity.
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