Poland: Monika Krajewska’s “Burning” series of papercuts to be exhibited this fall at the POLIN Museum in Warsaw. (We hosted an online exhibit in 2020.)

In 2020, we were privileged to host an online exhibition of work by the Warsaw-based papercut artist Monika Krajewska. The pieces were drawn from her extraordinary cycle of papercuts called “Burning,” a commemoration of the physical destruction of the Shoah.

This fall, from October 4 to December 18,  Krajewska’s  Burning cycle will be exhibited at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.  Make sure to see it if you are in Warsaw!

“’Burning’ is my requiem for the synagogues and ceremonial objects destroyed together with the communities that created and cherished them,” Krajewska told us. “If even synagogues and cemeteries were doomed, what was the fate of Torah scrolls, candelabra, books and fragile papercuts? Only slivers survived.”

The POLIN exhibit consists of:

 31 works in which the artist refers to the objects related to synagogue cult and transfers them to the traditional Jewish paper-cutting technique, painstakingly recreating the symbolism and ornamentation of Jewish art from East-Central Europe—stylised floral decoration, symbolic representations of animals, a repertoire of traditional sacred Judaic symbols (a menorah, Torah and the Tablets of Law, the Temple) and calligraphic quotations from religious texts and prayers.

In order to introduce reflection on loss and destruction, the artist subjects her painstaking work to destruction: she tears apart sections of the works after cutting them out and burns the ends of the sheets. She uses tinted paper as a background for the cut-outs, incorporating the motif of fire, ashes and ruins. In the representations, she incorporates quotations from religious texts or classics of modern Jewish literature, in which there are references to flames and destruction, as well as to the hope of salvation.

Krajewska 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.

She says:

The Burning series has grown to be my requiem for ceremonial objects obliterated together with the communities which had created them, looked after them and hoped to pass them on to next generations. I wanted to pay homage to the old-time masters of cut-outs who tirelessly transformed a white sheet of paper into a Gan Eden full of fantastic creatures. Like builders of wooden synagogues and authors of the woodcarving and painting who undertook their ‘sacred mission to create a beautiful framework for the fulfilment of each religious precept. My work which is inspired by their art was first carefully drawn and cut out, then stained, torn, set on fire…”

Click here to see our 2020 online exhibit of Krajewska’s work

Click here to see information about the exhibit on the POLIN web site