The new video, installation, mixed-media, and text works in this show examine the diverging and overlapping cultural landscapes of fact and fiction and communal and individual narratives through reference to the artist’s dual colonial Mayflower and Russian-Jewish refugee heritage.

The exhibition addresses the immediate legacy of inherited family violence and trauma through the prism of broader systems of power and control. The physical threats experienced by Roberts Berkowitz at the hands of her father are scrutinized with reference to the colonial projects of their shared Mayflower ancestors and the structural racism and capitalist institutions that are sustained by this historical narrative. In a new video work the artist turns her attention to  questions of complicity and solidarity, examining the role played by her mother, the descendent of socialist, Jewish, radical refugees, in upholding  structures of patriarchy and inherited power while serving as one of Southern California’s first female police captains.