Exhibitions

Sites of Repressed Remembrance

Opening: May 24, Wednesday, 18:30

Artists: Júlia Baki, Daniel Baker, Tibor Balogh, Delaine le Bas, Tamara Moyzes, Csaba Nemes, Alexander Schikowski, Erika Varga

Curators: Diana Bencze, Tímea Junghaus, Luca Pintér

The artists and curators of the exhibition Sites of Repressed Remembrance were inspired by the book with the same title written by Katalin Katz in 2005. This important source in Hungarian holocaust history includes several testimonies by Roma holocaust survivors and it is one of the first publications to consider the phenomena of silence and the importance and meaning of hidden, untold and repressed stories, memories and remembrance.

The invited artists reflect ont he violence against Roma during and after the holocaust. They examine the stories, places and remembrance of the atrocities and they explore and unveil how their sites became the locations of repressed memories and sometimes even forgetting instead of becoming the locations for remembrance and memorial practice. In this regard the exhibited artworks are drawing attention to the absence of memorials and the need of commemoration sites for both the Roma holocaust and the recent Roma murders.

In the lack of a proper cultural and commemorative infrastructure for Roma, community events such as this exhibition and the sorrowful memory of the Roma holocaust are the two most important factors in constructing Roma identities. They initiate a sense of trans-generational continuity, shared memories, and a sense of common destiny.

The exhibition was on view on March 2, 2016 in Budapest as a conected event to the conference The Memory of the Roma Genocide – Education, Research, Civil activism, and Human rights.