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Tag Archives: Jewish

Jewish Tombstones for Everyday Use – Lukasz Baksik

a photo of grinding wheel made of matzevot

"Matzevot for Everyday Use", Lukasz Baksik, 2008-2011

Photographer Łukasz Baksik (born in 1975) is primarily interested in documentary photography. All of his previous projects (e.g. Main Course Polish Style, Ordering a Beer, or The People of Nowy Square) contained a crucial social component. For many years Łukasz Baksik has been documenting Jewish cemeteries in Poland.

Embellished with symbols and inscriptions, Jewish tombstones convey information about the life of people, families and entire shtetls (towns). How many matzevot were there before the World War II at the 1,200 Jewish cemeteries in Poland? This is a question, which nobody can answer today. The number may have reached a few hundred thousand or a few million.

More than four hundred Jewish cemeteries did not survive the war times. They were rearranged to provide sites for housing estates, sports fields, garbage dumps or sand quarries. The sand mined from them to build houses was mixed with human remains. Only a hundred and fifty graveyards still have more than a hundred gravestones.

During the World War II the Nazi occupants used matzevot to pave the courtyards of their new buildings, to lay roads or erect walls. Poles continued this infamous practice after the war. Matzevot were used, for instance, to line a water pool for fire fighters, a railway embankment or a riverbank. They were used as building material for furnaces, flooring and road curbs. A visitor will find hundreds of grinding wheels made of matzevot, many of them still bearing Hebrew inscriptions.

The excibition “Matzevot for Everyday Use” forms part of 22 Jewish Culture Festival which takes place in Krakow – Poland from 29 of June until 8 of July 2012.


Yael Bartana – “And Europe Will Be Stunned”

And Europe Will Be Stunned (2011) is the compelling trilogy of films made by Israeli artist Yael Bartana, which premiered at the 54th Venice Biennale last year, making Bartana the first non-national to exhibit in the Polish Pavilion. Revolving around the activities of the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland, a group that calls for the return of three million Jews to Poland, Bartana’s films traverse a landscape scarred by the histories of competing nationalisms and nightmares across Europe and the Middle East.

Bartana expertly mixes imagery reminiscent of the historical past with the present, and raises questions of identity and belonging, leaving us to pause and question our own concepts of home and homeland.  In raising these questions regarding the complexities of cultural integration, interwoven with reality and fiction, her films challenge us to question our own understanding and acceptance of historical events.

Her film trilogy – Mary Koszmary (Nightmares) (2007), Mur i wieża (Wall and Tower) (2009), Zamach (Assassination) (2011) –  is on view from 24th of March until 26th of August 2012 in Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven – The Netherlands.

Visiting address:
Bilderdijklaan 10
5611 NH Eindhoven
The Netherlands

You can also attend the upcoming symposium on 18th of May at the Whitechapel Gallery in London – ‘And Will Europe Be Stunned?’ – which opens up the debates sparked by these highly ambitious and contentious films: beginning with a keynote paper from Gil Hochberg, Professor of Comparative Literature at UCLA, there will then follow a Q&A with the artist and a panel discussion with Joanna Mytkowska, Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, and Jacqueline Rose, Professor at Queen Mary University.

22 May – 1 July 2012
Hornsey Town Hall
Crouch End, London

This event has been organised with the support of the Polish Cultural Institute. Tickets are available from the Whitechapel Box Office.

For those who are interested in the full version of the interview with Yael Bartana for Louisiana Museum we attach the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjUToEWrFLI


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