Uilleam Blacker, Remembering Jews and the Holocaust in Contemporary Poland: The Art of Joanna Rajkowska, Rafał Betlejewski and Yael Bartana

The paper analyses how the work of three contemporary artists deal with the memory of Poland’s pre-war Jewish population and the Holocaust, which annihilated that population. Joanna Rajkowska is one of Poland’s leading contemporary artists and her artworks have been displayed in prominent public sites in Warsaw. Her most famous work is her palm tree in central Warsaw, ‘Greetings from Jerusalem Alley’, which references, in its form and physical location on Aleje Jerozolimskie, Jerusalem and the city’s vanished Jews. Rajkowska has also touched on Jewish themes and used important Jewish locations in Warsaw in other work, such as ‘Oxygenator’ (2007). Yael Bartana is an Israeli artist, but represented Poland at the Venice Biennale in 2011. In her trilogy of films set in Poland, ‘And Europe Will Be Stunned’ (2006-11), Bartana uses prominent locations in Warsaw in which to stage performances (the Palace of Culture, the National Stadium, site of the future Museum of Polish Jews) that provocatively posit a return of Jews to Poland. Betlejewski has authored several provocative and creative responses to the absence of Jews in contemporary Poland, such as his ‘I miss you, Jew!’ project (2004), and his ‘Burning barn’ performance (2010). The paper will examine the varying strategies through which these artists deal with the problem of the absence of Jews, the trauma of their violent disappearance, and attempt to re-inscribe the vanished Jews back into the landscape of contemporary Poland. Some images, sounds or other media used in the following presentation are subject to copyright restrictions that prevent them being shown. In order to provide a complete record of the conference, these items have been blurred or silenced. Should we obtain permission to use these images, sounds and other media in the future the films will be updated.