Artist Margarita Fainshtein’s work suggests self and family portraits, through canvases, works on paper, ordinary cast acrylic objects, and suitcases constructed from plexiglass. They are imprinted with family documents including Communist party tickets, passports and birth certificates. Fainshtein was born in Ukraine and like many of her family migrated first to Israel and Canada.

“The suitcase is a container – it contains the memories and emotions my family carried with us to every new place we had to move to in order to survive, to live. In this search for safety, for home, we had to change cultures and languages, we had to change ourselves.”

Fainshtein holds an MFA from the School of Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from the University of Haifa, Israel. Her work has been exhibited in the US, Israel and Canada.