Altar I, from the series Santos y sombras/​Saints and Shadows

Muriel Hasbun, Altar I, from the series Santos y sombras/ Saints and Shadows, 1997, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 2005.4.2, © 1997, Muriel Hasbun
Copied Muriel Hasbun, Altar I, from the series Santos y sombras/ Saints and Shadows, 1997, gelatin silver print, 17 5⁄8 x 13 3⁄4 in. (44.9 x 35.0 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 2005.4.2, © 1997, Muriel Hasbun

Artwork Details

Title
Altar I, from the series Santos y sombras/​Saints and Shadows
Artist
Date
1997
Location
Dimensions
17 5⁄8 x 13 3⁄4 in. (44.9 x 35.0 cm)
Copyright
© 1997, Muriel Hasbun
Credit Line
Gift of the artist
Mediums Description
gelatin silver print
Classifications
Subjects
  • Monument — religious — cross
Object Number
2005.4.2
Linked Open Data
https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2005.4.2

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.