I had never seen her face so red, 2025
35 mm slides, inkjet transparency prints
Abrahmson collection
Hannah Abrahmson was an Israeli-American musicologist and professor of art history. Born in Bratislava, her family fled Czechoslovakia for the United States during the Holocaust. When Abrahmson passed away, she left behind a massive archive of slide film, faded red with age, which she had used for teaching and research throughout her career. Her art history archive offers a sweeping survey of Western art. The vast majority of these slides contain images of women – mostly portrayed by male artists – all of which are presented here.
Abrahmson’s archive also contains dozens of slides of personal photographs, including the stereoscopic images presented here. Someone had altered these slides, cutting out a man from each frame, leaving the group of women intact. These photographs are unlabeled. The identities of the women, the absent man, and the person who made the cuts all remain a mystery.
The title of this work, “I had never seen her face so red,” is a line from Abrahmson’s memoir in which she describes her mother’s appearance as they fled their home during the Holocaust.
Kat Bawden is an artist, educator, and curator whose multidisciplinary practice spans photography, video, performance, and light-based installations. Kat constructs immersive spaces and suspended realities that probe the relationships between memory, time, and the body. Working with sensitivity to the physiological and emotional impact of light, her work is both experimental and deeply embodied.
Kat runs Murmuration, an experimental art space and artist residency in Chicago. She holds an MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is an adjunct professor of art at Dominican University.
Her work has been supported by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and featured in Artforum, Lenscratch, Der Grief, the Chicago Reader, and others. She has exhibited and performed at the International Center of Photography, the Design Museum of Chicago, Iceberg Projects, Comfort Station, Co-Prosperity, the International Museum of Surgical Science, Prairie Ronde Artist Gallery, and others.