Remember what they took from us

The first ever monograph of Judy Korbach, whose art explores the dynamics between individual responsibility versus broader structures of power. For Jody Korbach, art is a medium that lets her frame both indictments of social structures and critical self-reflections. She insistently questions which position the individual can occupy in ongoing power struggles, and whether it is even possible to live up to one's own yearnings in a field traversed by the dynamics of community and social norms. Korbach scrutinizes concerns such as belonging, class struggle, the promises of advancement, and the balancing act between personal responsibility and the constraints of structural realities. "Remember what they took from us" is a meme from 2018 that took on the originally ethnonationalist plaint about an allegedly more glorious past of which people had been deprived and subjected it to irony. The first monograph on Jody Korbach's work reinterprets the suggestive prompt as a question. Who still remembers? What is being remembered, and what do the different ways of remembering imply for our present time? Essays by Jennifer Braun, Annekathrin Kohout, and Julian Volz explore these questions in light of selected works by Korbach, providing in-depth insight into the ideas behind her practice.