Today (April 19) marks the 77th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising — and Yom HaShoah is on Tuesday.
We are privileged to mark the occasion by hosting — as our new Have Your Say — a remarkable online exhibition of work by the artist Monika Krajewska. They are drawn from her extraordinary cycle of papercuts called “Burning.”
“Burning,” she writes
is my requiem for the synagogues and ceremonial objects destroyed together with the communities that created and cherished them. If even synagogues and cemeteries were doomed, what was the fate of Torah scrolls, candelabra, books and fragile papercuts? Only slivers survived.
Krajewska, who lives in Warsaw, is an accomplished photographer who was a pioneer in researching and documenting Jewish cemeteries and other built heritage in Poland. Her books of photographs of Jewish cemeteries, Time of Stones (1982) and A Tribe of Stones (1993), were ground-breaking in the field. Today, her photographs and papercuts are in synagogues, museums, and private collections. In her work she employs the symbolism and iconography found on gravestones and in synagogues in her contemporary interpretation of the traditional Jewish papercut form.
Click here to view the exhibit
3 comments on “Powerful Papercuts: Online Exhibition of Monika Krajewska’s “Burning” Cycle (2003-2020), a requiem for the Jewish world destroyed in the Shoah”
Extraordinary. It is interesting to see motifs common on tombstones being used in this unique way.
Actually, candlesticks motifs (mixed with the tree of life) were used in traditional papercuts, too, as well as on gravestones — see my brief description here quoting both Monika and the fascinating and wonderful book “Traditional Jewish Papercuts: An Inner World of Art and Symbol” (Hanover NH, 2002), by Joseph and Yehudit Shadur. https://candlesticksonstone.wordpress.com/candlestick-types/
Stunning work. The craftsmanship, eyesight, and patience are extraordinary.
Are originals or facsimile copies available?