Montreal artist Freda Guttman’s Every Epoch Dreams stages the making and reconstitution of historical narrative, the distortions of memory and the malleable qualities of representation. Part of the To Archive the Shape of Memory series, Every Epoch Dreams conjures the insidious deceptions of Naziism in the context of the re-emergence of genocide in the twenty-first century. The piece presents a digitally altered anamorphic image of Adolf Hitler, based on a 1930s propaganda photo depicting the charismatic dictator and mass murderer at his ease in a garden with children. The image, stretched beyond recognition on a flat disk, is restored to legibility when reflected in the polished steel cylinder that forms the centre of this photo-sculpture. As the motorized base drum revolves, the startling photograph passes in and out of focus, unfolding a conceptual and aesthetic drama.

Guttman writes about the piece, “This work overlays memories of my Jewish childhood in Montreal with what could be remembered of the historical events that occurred in those years. In particular, I was interested in the growth of fascism and the modern phenomenon of the enthrallment of masses of people by a leader such as Hitler; how these two kinds of remembrances are mediated and (re)constructed by technologies of representation and the passage of time; how they cross paths and affect each other.”