Shibboleth Ż1, 2019, own technique on the metal plate

The object suspended at the intersection of two walls is an immobile hieroglyph of historical memory, shibboleth Ż, a relic stopping the viewer’s perception on the irreversible, non-erasable fact of the Shoah, the appearance of which is Treblinka Extermination Camp here – a place of the beginning of the story about evil, which the artist resumes as a deposit handed over by her ancestors.

The surface of the object/metal plate, furrowed with the traces of welding, ends between the old and the new borderline of the camp, a result of broadening our knowledge of this place’s actual topography, and a symbol of memory as an ar- chive. The texture of the object, its austerity, and the way of displaying it bring to mind the staging techniques of Malewicz and Russian icon painters.

The material (old corroded metal sheet) used in this work relates to the many Jews’ stories during the Shoah – their ways of surviving thanks to their craft skills.

In Hebrew History shibboleth has been used as a password, the way of protection and self-identification. The first letter of the word (Shin) was unpronounce- able for the foreigners and something that unmasked them as such. It served therefore as a kind of stigma and exclusion.

In the herstories of the Jewish women fighters it meant two different things: the mark of identity and bond of solidarity but also a danger to be recognised on the aryan side. Letter Shin had to be hidden, so as not to betray the secret of identity.

This is a story which never dies, being endlessly recreated in ever new mutations, and referring also to the present time.