Talking Memory Book Launch Event‘Arbeit Macht Frei’: Representations and Meanings in Art

The Ghetto Fighters’ House Invites You to a Special Talking Memory Book Launch Event

‘Arbeit Macht Frei’: Representations and Meanings in Art

Opening Remarks: Yigal Cohen, CEO, Ghetto Fighters’ House

Speakers: Prof. Shelley Hornstein

Remembering through Art

Dr. Batya Brutin

Preserving the Memory: Holocaust Icons in Post Holocaust Visual Art

Join us for the book launch of Dr. Batya Brutin’s book Arbeit Macht Frei, the third and final book in her trilogy on Holocaust icons in visual art. Our guest speaker is Prof. Shelley Hornstein, who will give a lecture on how objects of visual art: sculpture, photographs, and paintings, function to convey history and attempt to serve up narratives about the past, asking whether art succeeds at transmitting sufficiently into the present the evil and atrocities of the Holocaust. The ongoing debate is tackled in an exhibition she will discuss entitled The Evidence Room (Venice Architecture Biennale, 2016) where archival documents from Auschwitz form the basis of plaster reliefs, drawings, photographs and sculpture to challenge our concept of the real through representation. Rather than deaden our gaze, these objects double as communicative devices that transport past events into the now and reinforce how documents fuel the making of artforms that can effectively convey through reification the power of truth.

Dr. Batya Brutin will then give a lecture describing her journey writing the trilogy. She will discuss Jewish and non-Jewish artists that used Holocaust icons to manifest their ideas, thoughts, beliefs, messages, and political opinions on social, cultural, and political issues. Ass well, in her lecture, Dr. Brutin will explore how these artists utilize in their artworks famous images of the little boy with his hands raised during the Warsaw Ghetto liquidation, the blue line of serial numbers forcibly tattooed on the prisoners’ forearms in Auschwitz, and the well-known phrase “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“Work Sets You Free”) on concentration camps gates, especially the one in Auschwitz The presentation will combine the personal point of view of each artist and the general trends and processes indicating the attitude of the artists toward these icons.

This program is in participation with Remember the Women Institute, Women in the Holocaust International Study Center, Moreshet Holocaust and Study Center, Classrooms Without Borders, Rabin Chair Forum at George Washington University, and the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Center.

To register, click here.