Translations, my hat has three holes

Ena pticka mi poje, pa sem ne vem kje.

A voice, breaking to the point of crying, emanates from inside the suitcase. The emotion expressed is what is most evident. Unless you understand Slovene, the content and context of what she is saying and why she is recording this message is only alluded to. For me, I know why she cries, but I do not understand all the words she is saying. It is a message sent to my family from my mom’s sister. She did not leave Slovenia like my mother did during the mass exodus from Slovenia at the end of WW2 in 1945. She was still very young, so she stayed with my grandmother, who did not want to leave. Miriam Fabijan

Ena pticka mi poje, pa sam ne vem kje (A little bird sings to me, but I do not know from where) (1993), incorporates a sound installation placed in an oak suitcase … The phrase refers to Slovenia as reminiscent of a bird, in a passage that appears on a wall of a monastery designed by the Slovenian architect Jose Plecnik. Attached is the outline of the map of Slovenia. Fabijan explains that the map of Slovenia is reminiscent of a bird, a theme which is referred to in the text from the monastery. Fabijan ventures to retrieve this picture-and-word attachment, the Slovenian multi-layered concept of bird, for example, to reunite language and image to reconstruct a world, to take it in, love it, and make it her own. But as an exile in reverse, revisiting a Slovenia she first knew through her parents and grandparents, the inability to speak the native language denies her ready access to that living world.  
Included is the voice of a woman speaking in Slovene and not translated, reflecting Fabijan's own struggle with her partial comprehension of the Slovenian language in attempting to reconnect to her roots. "Slovene, my first language which I no longer use nor remember, except in fragments," Fabijan says, "was lost to me as my family adapted to a new environment and adopted a new culture" (Fabijan, 1992). Loren Lerner (1999)

This piece centres around a photograph of my mother and me in which we are wearing dresses made from the same fabric but in different styles, related but not the same. There is much we share, but we do not share a mother tongue. The phrase MAMA IMA HRUŠKO came from a Slovenian children’s schoolbook I had as a child. From it I learned a few Slovenian words and phrases, but I did not otherwise retain the language of my very early youth, my mother’s mother tongue. Miriam Fabijan

Stari, Stara
— by touch —

dual slide installation, gesso applied by hand onto black canvas, stretched and framed, (installation and details)
1997