Artist's Statement
Simon Wiesenthal was an Austrian Jew who survived twelve concentration camps, and afterwards made it his goal to bring justice rather than revenge to Nazi war criminals. I've depicted different images relating to cases he worked on. The patches represent the different victims he believed in remembering Holocaust victims. The sunflowers reference his book, The Sunflower, which discusses the moral dilemma of forgiving Nazis. Josephine Baker was a black bisexual American and performer who grew in her fame in France due to racism in America. She joined the French military as a spy using fame as her cover and got classified information. I represented her by placing references to the civil rights movement and her activism like the clenched fists and protesters. The violet is a symbol of bisexuality. This piece represents their moral courage to defend others.
