Artist Statement
Anita H. Grosz is a photographer- artist from the USA, currently based in Berkshire, England. Her main area of research is displacement (forced and voluntary) and identity, considering cultural impacts on the individual. Much of her work is documentary and experimental.
Recently, Anita has explored the personal story of her father's 1939 forced journey without his parents to Britain from Czechoslovakia on the Kindertransport at the age of 15. Hanus Grosz' survival was possible as a result of the efforts of two individuals: Sir Nicholas Winton, the Kindertransport organizer, and Lilian Bowes-Lyon, the sponsor and guardian. Neither individual knew Hanus prior to his journey. From 1939 to 1949, Lilian Bowes-Lyon communicated with Hanus by letter. The current series of work, Letters from Lilian, illustrate the struggle of an adolescent to reach adulthood in a foreign country without family. Anita has returned to the location where the letters were written to explore the impact of the letters through door images (Doorways). A related piece of work examines the envelopes which were written by Lilian and received Hanus during this critical period, culminating in a book. Anita has also produced a video entitled: Letters from Lilian: Lilian Bowes-Lyon and Sir Nicholas Winton --Bedrock of Being, merging the two humanitarian individuals whose efforts made it possible for her father to survive the Holocaust and Anita to exist.
Forced and voluntary displacement has been developed further by Anita while on a one-month artist/student exchange at the National Institute of Art in India. She has begun a new project on the Jews of Ahmedabad, documenting the few Jews who remain in Ahmedabad, India, and their lives. Simultaneously, Anita has begun a project in Ahmedabad examining the slum culture and the lives of those displaced by "progress."
Prior to returning to photography as an art form, Anita has worked with ceramics and sculpture. Occasionally these art forms merge together to express Anita's message. Before moving to England, Anita worked as an intellectual property lawyer in New York City, often engaging with the art world in some capacity. When Anita moved to England, she put her energy into arts development in Wokingham borough before determining that self-expression would be more gratifying.