Offere II

The artists bring bread and salt to the cemetery in Obelai, Lithuania, the village where they believe their ancestors, the Beinarts, once lived, before they emigrated or were erased in the holocaust. The artists meet in front of the gravestones to share bread and salt, in an echo of their earlier film, Offere. It is uncertain if there are Beinarts buried in this cemetery, or where exactly in this village Woolf was born, but the offering of salt comes from the place he is buried. They perform a traditional ritual that marks the crossing of a threshold, often to a new home. But perhaps they are re-enacting this ritual in reverse: bringing with them the histories of lives that stemmed from this place but were lived out in an unimaginable future. The artist’s actions are a form of memory in the making. The action is documented in a series of 10 black and white prints. Photographs by William Beinart.