Zofia Lipecka. After Jedwabne

This show of video-installations by the Polish-born artist, permanently settled in France, is an artistic voice in the discussion aroused as a reaction to Tomasz Gross’s 2001 book Neighbours. In a small space, Lipecka presents four simultaneous projections (two pairs opposite each other) multiplied, virtually to infinity, by mirrors that reflect them hanging on the two other walls. The films show the faces of people in extreme close-up as they react to the reading of a fragment of text from Gross’ book: the testimony of Szmul Waserstajn about the events in Jedwabne. From loud-speakers emerges a sound in which the read text of the testimony can be made out clearly. The spectators surrounded by this projection become a part of the installation, they are themselves forced to take up a position with regard to the problem of the extermination. They are exposed alone in confrontation with the text, the projection and their own reflection.

“Memory of genocide is a universal problem which concerns all of us, no matter our nationality, faith or colour of skin: it concerns those who have experienced it personally and those who have knowledge of it through books: those who could have been victims and those who could have committed it. The Shoah, the extermination of the Roma people, of Armenians, genocide in Cambodia, Ruanda… Going beyond the Polish context, After Jedwabne is a tragic question, without an answer, as to the inhuman in people,” the artist wrote in a commentary to her work.

curator Hanna Wróblewska

Catalogue of the exhibition including texts by Philippe Piguet and Elżbieta Janicka, published with the financial support of Association Solidarité France Pologne (Paris).

Zofia Lipecka. After Jedwabne
Kurator Hanna Wroblewska