What They Saw on the Way to the Synagogue on the 26th 0f April 1944
During a residency in Lendava, Slovenia, I visited the local synagogue, now a cultural center and a main tourist site. What was curious about the existence of this synagogue was the fact that there was only one elderly Jewish person still living in the whole town. Every other Jewish person had been summoned to the synagogue from various parts of Lendava on April 26th, 1944. From there, they were loaded into trucks and taken to Auschwitz where they all perished.Besides the synagogue, there was a lack of any acknowledgment of the lives of the various Jewish families, who had been prominent business owners in Lendava before the war. Feeling the unacknowledged presence of all these families, I retraced the various paths to the synagogue. I researched the ages of the trees on the way to the synagogue that were over 70 years old. While the local people seemed to have forgotten their Jewish neighbours, they had clear recollection of the trees that had been there 70 years ago and more. I photographed all of these trees and printed them in standard snapshot size. Working directly on the photographs, I sanded off any evidence of the present, leaving only the stark trees as a direct link to the tragic but unmarked events of April 26th, 1944.
This work was presented as part of the exhibition “I was there!” at The Centre for Memory and Testimony Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, Kitchener, ON 2015
It was also presented as in the exhibition Physis & Tekhne – part of B#SIDE WAR 2016
ARTWORKS BY O Yemi Tubi, Cosima Montavoci, Anastasia Vepreva, John Atkin, Linda Duvall, Victoria Lucas, Vanessa Gageos, Natalie Vanheule, Daniel Wechsler, Sarawut Chutiwongpeti.
B#SIDE WAR is an international art festival that explores the legacies of World War I and World War II. The festival takes place in Venice, Italy and involves researchers, curators, museums, and cultural institutions.
Inaugurazione della mostra di arte contemporanea Physis & Tékhne
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24.06 – 31.07.2016 / opening 24.0618:00 / Cormons
via matteotti 14 / iodeposito.org/0969 / Program 2015/2016
Inauguration of the contemporary art exhibition Physis & Tékhne
contemporary artists in relation to technology and nature in the conflicts of the 20th century.
The exhibition will be open from 24 June to 30 July 2016, from Monday to Saturday from 10.00 to 19.30.
Physis & Technology brochure.pdf
Works by O Yemi Tubi, Cosima Montavoci, Anastasia Vepreva, John Atkin, Linda Duvall, Victoria Lucas, Vanessa Gageos, Natalie Vanheule, Daniel Wechsler, Sarawut Chutiwongpeti, Gordon Belray.
Physis & Tékhne recounts the legacies of the 20th century conflicts between past and present, capturing them in their most aerial and at the same time most pervasive dimension: that linked to natural elements and, by contrast, to the dimension of technological advancement.The exhibition begins its reflection from the First World War, the ‘mother’ of contemporary wars and a true historical watershed, which gave a sharp acceleration to some mega-trends that are now in all respects the grammar of our contemporary life, helping to move the limit of acceptance of actions considered ‘against nature’ a little further, and giving rise to a systematized extermination through technology.
Technology and nature polarize, representing the cruel and the beautiful, the nonsense and the sublime, life and death.
the symbolism of the natural element is developed in its almost prophetic, not necessarily reassuring, components, establishing, among the natural elements, the protagonism of the organicity of the soil, which is symbolized as an element of protection, survival but also of concealment and suffocation.In the exhibition, the elements of doubling and multiplication instead highlight the spectrum of seriality, representing the inhuman side. Through the inclusion of historical elements of the period, the exhibition comes to insinuate doubt on the role of the artist as well as on the role of nature itself in the conflict, completing the parable of technology that returns to nature, even if in the form of fiction.
B#Side War Vol.II The second edition of the widespread artistic and cultural review, permeates 12 territories of Friuli Venezia Giulia, Veneto and Istria, with a strong international component: it will involve contributors from 39 countries around the world, to promote a transversal and joint reflection on the common past of the world wars, with the aim of investigating the connections that exist between the first world conflict and our daily life, between our war past and the way in which we perceive the world today. Different interpretations will emerge, which are linked to complex historical events that still raise the question of the human experience of the first world conflict, to date not fully explored, but so powerful in its tragedy, to go beyond the measure of the life of those who faced it directly, transmitting itself even after the death of the individual, strong enough to shape the cultural identity from generation to generation.