Angels and Phantoms Muriel Hasbun Exhibit Evokes Familyís Complex Cultural History by Carolyn Cosmos Tucked away in three small rooms at the Corcoran Gallery of Art is a haunting photography exhibitóa dream garden of meditative memories and personal artifacts from Central America, the Middle East and Europe. Muriel Hasbunís ìMementoî is an urban oasis filled with images and constructions in cream and ash and black and white. The visual remembering and dreaming in Hasbunís photographic compositions are a search for her family history and personal identity. They include gelatin silver prints on paper and prints on linen that combine, in collage-like overlapping layers, pictures of draped statues in churches, faded family photographs, fragments of postcards and typed or handwritten messages, contemporary family portraits and images from nature. Hasbun has said she wanted to evoke ìthe emotional aura Ö of an experience that is no longer present.î Her art, wrote the exhibitís curator, Paul Roth, contains aesthetic references to 19th-century ìspirit photography,î which ìattempted to record the visitations of angels and phantoms.î Her family history and the themes in the exhibit encompass three continents. ìI come from peoples in exile,î Hasbun wrote. ìMy mother was born in Paris to Polish Jewish parents who settled in France just before World War II. My father was born in El Salvador to Palestinian Christian parents who settled in Central America.î Hasbun, who is the fine art photography program coordinator at the Corcoran College of Art + Design, combines her visual layers into smoky and frequently surreal compositions that evoke a personal past. There is a section on her childhood in San Salvador and her Roman Catholic and Palestinian roots, and another on her motherís Jewish relatives who fled Poland during the Holocaust to the Auvergne region of Vichy France. The exhibitís aural environment, mostly in the form of melancholy melodies, presents an aesthetic remarkably similar to the visual one. The echoing voice of an unaccompanied singer randomly repeats two measures in a minor key. It floats through the exhibit and alternates with a ghostly spoken narrative that occurs in fragments: ìAugust 1941 Ö thatís when we arrived Ö I spent two years thereÖî The exhibit is small and intimate, with about 50 photographs. It consists of two sections and five separately themed ìseries.î The opening section on El Salvador, which is broken up into two parts, is titled ìSantos y Sombras (Saints and Shadows),î and the second section consists of the three-part ìProtegida (Watched Over).î Each series incorporates distinctive visual and media elements as well as unifying motifs, including variations on the theme of fabrics. The opening section offers a number of textile images, the fabrics of which are frequently layered and variously opaque, translucent or transparent. There are curtains and veils, heavily draped statues of saints, and a picture of a picture on fabric. This section also includes surreal nature imagesóa volcano erupts Arabic scripts, for instance, while faces or, say, an immigrantís fingerprint hide behind layered branches, palm trees and petals. The first of the ìProtegidaî series, which turns to France, also offers partially visible faces, as well as scripts, old postcards and other mementoes that Hasbun printed on remnants of linens belonging to her maternal grandmother. Several of the linen prints are attached with wood clothespins to separate clotheslines, and each casts a distinctive shadow on the gallery wall. Other prints are presented in ìdiscardedî wooden frames splashed with white paint. In the final exhibit room, the prints focus on Hasbunís great aunt HÈlene in the town of Le Mont-Dore in France. Theyíre presented as formal triptychs in polished and stained frames mounted on pedestals. These include images of churches, one of which has a backing of crushed red velvet. Another print backing is scattered with ìfound objectsî such as Ixcanal thorns. Hasbunís photo-based art, with its clothespins and collages, frames, fabrics, triptychs and thorns, is essentially sculptural in nature. The exhibit guest book includes multilingual comments of visitors from Brazil, Bolivia, Bulgaria, France, Spain and Japan, as well as the United States. One visitor wrote that the exhibit raised thoughts of ìmy family back home in Japan.î Exhibit curator Roth noted, ìHasbunís spirit of seeking is common to many people whose roots reside in a land outside their present home.î This quiet little exhibit, with its music, is also a refuge of its own. ìMemento: Muriel Hasbun Photographsî runs through June 7 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 500 17th St., NW. For more information, please call (202) 639-1700 or visit www.corcoran.org. Carolyn Cosmos is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.