UTW 59

Mira Steiner of Zagreb, Croatia

Mira Steiner, born Feb. 1922 in Zagreb, Croatia and murdered in the fishing village of Matajna,  island of Pag, Croatis, July 1941.

Art: 2006 - 2011
Size: 62 inches H + 5 inch high concrete base x 50 inch W
Mosaic-drawing combo

At exhibit installations the work is to be placed on a concrete base (from the late Music Hall Theatre, Seattle, 1929-91); that concrete piece placed on 2 concrete cinder blocks.

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Drawn from a photo loaned by the victim’s nephew, Dr. Dani Novak, a retired math professor, Ithaca College, N.Y. Born in Haifa, Dr Novak’s parents were both Croatian Jewish Holocaust survivors.

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The following are excerpts from letters sent by Dr Novak to Segan:

Mira was born Feb. 18, 1923. Slano is a place on the island Pag which is a very long island.
"Slano" means salt in Croatian.  The place has no trees, just rocks and probably this is

why it is called that way since nothing grows there.  From what I know it was a camp for
both women and men.  There was no structure for the prisoners and they could not
escape anywhere since it was on an island.

Mira was very beautiful and around 18 when she was brought there. 
There was a small beautiful fishing village called Matajna near Slano (on Pag)  and when the

ustsha [Ustashi were Croatian Fascists] came they told the  people who lived there to
 leave and used the houses for themselves.

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Some viewers have said “she’s upside down!” or asked me “Why is she upside down?”
The image that comes to me when I think of someone thrown out of an aircraft is the same that comes to me when I think of someone drowning...which can help viewers understand why I portrayed Mira Steiner, a young Croatian Jewish woman  murdered by Ustashi Croatian Fascists around 1942. According to her nephew, she had been raped and then drowned in the sea off the island of Pag.

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Is my portrayal of her upside down? I reply that she isn't depicted as being upside down. She's seen right-side up:  It's your individual visual perception and how one/you choose to interpret the portrayal. The artwork is right-side up. But when people are drowning, I think of them as flailing: arms, legs, not dissimilar to how I imagine one's body moving when flying (e.g.. thrown out of an aircraft) through the air (without a parachute) and plummeting to one's death.   See:
Sight-seeing with Dignity (SWD catalog) drawing 25: Sister Maura Clarke, an American Maryknoll missionary and nun murdered by soldiers in El Salvador, 1980; and  young Jewish Argentinian Fernando Brodsky, murdered by the Argentine air force, 1979. Brodsky was among Argentinians who were thrown out of Argentine military planes &/or jets over the Atlantic ocean.

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Exhibits: Hillel Center, Univ. of Washington, Seattle, 2013

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A 1 min, 1 sec video of the artwork

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A 7 min., 11 sec video of the artwork

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4 min. exhibit tour excerpt on the inception of the artwork, Hillel Center, University of Washington, Seattle, 2013.