Four artists commissioned to create new work in response to Holocaust testimony

Holocaust Centre North has announced four artists who will be joining an artistic residency to create new works in response to the narratives of Holocaust survivors.

The Memorial Gestures residency, funded by the Ernest Hecht Charitable Trust, was launched by the centre last year and enlists new and emerging artists to create work inspired by its archives and collections. 

The centre, which is based at the University of Huddersfield, works to tell the story of the Holocaust through local stories and materials from survivors who fled to the north of England. 

It aims to use the residency to overcome the challenges it faces in memorialising survivors of the Holocaust during a time when antisemitism is on the rise and fewer first-hand accounts are available. 

This makes the centre one of the only organisations in the UK to explore remembrance of the Holocaust through the medium of artistic practice. 

The centre's director, Alessandro Bucci, said: “We are steadfast in our belief that artistic responses to our growing collection can illuminate the history and memory of the Holocaust for future generations.”

The artists who will be participating in the residency over the next nine months are Maud Haya-Baviera, Irina Razumovskaya, Ariane Schick and Matt Smith. They will work with a variety of different mediums including ceramics, video installations, writing, and sound. 

Baviera is a French-born artist who works with a variety of mediums from video, to photography and sculptures. Similarly, Razumovskaya, is a London-based Russian-Israeli sculptor who plays with abstraction and architectural forms.

Ariane Schick, who also resides in London, explores perception and memory through writing, sculpture and sound. Lastly, Smith is a British artist and curator who holds a PhD in queer craft.

In partnership with the centre’s staff, the artists will find information by speaking to families of the survivors, as well as archivists and historians.

This aligns with the organisation’s commitment to placing the narratives of the survivors at the centre of the art. The hope is that the artists will use these materials to illustrate themes like discrimination and displacement to the wider public.

Paula Kolar, a curator at Holocaust Centre North, said: “Working with memories from the last of the first-generation survivors and turning traumatic histories into artworks with contemporary relevance in engaging, thought-provoking and ethical ways is an incredibly challenging and daunting task.”

After each artist has completed their artwork, the pieces will premier at a exhibition at Holocaust Centre North in September next year. 

An interview with artist Matt Smith will appear in a future issue of Museums Journal