Monday 17 February 2025 at 20h
Dr. Aleksandra Janus - Zapomniane Foundation
Lecture in English, in cooperation with the Zapomniane Foundation and the Polish Institute Brussels.
Lecture in room R.013, Rodestraat 14, 2000 Antwerp.
Free entrance. To register, email to ijs@uantwerpen.be.
The exhibition “Landscape Archive” discusses uncommemorated burial sites of Holocaust victims located on Polish territory. The term Holocaust immediately evokes the image of extermination camps, such as Auschwitz and Treblinka. Meanwhile, the region of Central and Eastern Europe is heavily dotted with the forgotten graves of Jews murdered outside the camps. The victims lie in unmarked graves scattered in forests, roadside ditches and fields. The Zapomniane Foundation is an organization aimed at locating, marking and commemorating them in accordance with Jewish religious law. So far, the Foundation has located about 300 unmarked burial sites of Holocaust victims in Poland, marked 100 of them, and permanently commemorated more than a dozen.
Research results conducted by the Zapomniane Foundation presented at the exhibit include photographs documenting commemorated burial sites. It also explores the landscape not only as a scenery where history happens, but also as a witness and participant of events, storing evidence that can be an important source of knowledge that can be uncovered by research.
Two venues & hosting institutions in Brussels
▪ Exhibition from January 17 to February 28, 2025 at CCLJ - Jewish Secular Community Center (in French).
▪ Exhibition from January 29 to February 28, 2025 at Norway House (in English).
Exhibition curator: Dr Aleksandra Janus
Artistic research: Aleksander Schwarz
Researchers, collaborators: Agnieszka Nieradko, Dr Sebastian Różycki, Dr Szymon Lenarczyk
Project organized by the Urban Memory Foundation (UMF) and the Zapomniane Foundation in collaboration with the Polish Institute in Brussels, CCLJ - Jewish Secular Community Center, Mission of Norway to the European Union and CEJI - A Jewish Contribution to an Inclusive Europe. The project is part of the programme of the Polish Presidency of the Council of the EU in 2025 and the MultiMemo project funded by the EU Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values programme. More info: click here.
Aleksandra Janus holds a PhD in Anthropology and works at the intersections of academia, art, and activism. She is the President of the Zapomniane Foundation and co-founder of the Engaged Memory Consortium aimed at proposing an innovative approach to remembrance. She collaborates with the Research Center for Memory Cultures at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow and is part of the global network and project "Thinking Through The Museum". Recently, together with dr Natalia Romik, she carried out research as part of a project "Hideouts. Architecture of Survival" which resulted in an exhibition shown in Warsaw in 2022 (Zacheę̨ta - National Gallery of Art) and Frankfurt in 2024 (The Jewish Museum). She is the curator of the exhibition “Landscape Archive”. (photo © Edouard Gillès)
