22.06 Saturday

Cultural anthropologist Erica Lehrer will lead a tour of the permanent exhibition of the Ethnographic Museum, focusing on the artifacts (as well as the absences) related to Jews and Jewish culture. What do these objects say about non-Jewish Polish conceptions of Jews and Jewishness? How should “folk” culture about and by Jews be displayed in this kind of museum?

Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau are the two most famous and most visited genocidal sites in the world, but they do not encompass the whole of the Auschwitz complex. Jason Francisco's photo-text-installation work examines a part of the Auschwitz story all but erased from public memory, through a deliberate misuse of the historical practice of stereoscopy.

An installation of sculptural works by Stephania Freda Leigh, Oh, Their Breasts, Oh, My Breasts explores the sexual trauma inflicted upon women during the Holocaust. Leigh’s work—usually brightly colored, participatory, and bouncing—here takes form in a silent, lamenting, and weeping disposition. The exhibition problematizes the lack of recorded and shared knowledge of testimonies of sexual violence from the Holocaust and wartime in general, and continues Leigh’s investigation into what it means to be a Jewish Australian Polish Female Artist, and how her Jewish female body mourns the experiences of her ancestors.

A woman of many photographs and one great gesture. When she and her brother Natan inherited Ignacy Krieger’s photography studio, they decided to keep signing photographs with their famous father’s name. He is still famous today thanks to Amalia’s decision—after she had become the only official owner of the atelier—to donate the family’s collection of photographic plates to Kraków. She preserved the memory of the city, its monuments and its people. But who was this incredible Jewish woman, one of the first Polish photographers? Did she consider herself a pioneer, an artist? We know about what she did, we know about the way she worked. As for her thoughts and ideas—we will try to access them through her photography. Curated by Aśka Warchał-Beneschi.