Empathy Rather Than Ageism: A Daughter’s Portrayal of Her Elderly Holocaust Survivor Mother

This chapter focuses on Rachel Nemesh’s series of oil paintings and graphite drawings consisting of observations of her elderly mother and their mother-daughter relationship. The series will be discussed in light of the theory of narrative empathy, combining methodologies of indepth interviews with the artist as well as visual analysis of each work. Nemesh, a second-generation Holocaust survivor, born in Israel in the beginning of the 1950s uses two main features of narrative empathy as a means of expression: character identification and narrative situation. The representation of characters’ consciousness and emotional expression is a central feature creating empathic identification with Nemesh’s mother. Narrative situation pertains to the mediation between the artist as a narrator and the main characters (her mother and herself), the perspective of the artist as a narrator, and the stylistic manners which formulate the characters’ realm.