By Yehudit Shendar and Sorin Heller

To accommodate the exceptional exhibitions that Yad Vashem wishes to present to its many visitors, and to display much more of its extensive art and artifacts collections—including contemporary art—on a wide range of Holocaust-related subjects, Yad Vashem’s new Exhibitions Pavilion was opened in May in the presence of Minister of Housing and Construction Isaac Herzog MK and donors Rochelle and Henryk Schwarz, and Tina and Steven Schwarz (USA). A major component of the new Museum Complex, the 700-sq. meter Pavilion enables Yad Vashem to mount major interdisciplinary exhibitions and display large-size artworks, sculptures and installations.

Speaking at the inauguration, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev noted that Yad Vashem is currently grappling with the “central challenge of how to make remembrance of the Holocaust relevant to young people... In order to maintain our audience—which includes millions of young people—we must be dynamic. The Exhibitions Pavilion allows us to do that.”

The opening exhibition in the new Pavilion is “Etched Voices” a unique collection of artworks presenting the evolving portrayal of the Holocaust since the end of WWII. It comprises 130 works from some 70 renowned Israeli and international artists representing a variety of artistic disciplines—painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, installation art and video art. These works portray an ongoing discourse on the Shoah in Israeli art through the years. Beginning with artists who experienced the Holocaust or lived during that period, to leading and avant-garde artists in Israel and abroad whose viewpoint offers a broader perspective, the exhibition provides a basis for a comprehensive philosophical discussion on the nature of art, its function in society and the connection between art and history.

Based on a thematic approach to the Shoah, the exhibition is divided into three central responses: trauma and outcry; memory and alienation in the context of Jewish and Israeli identity; and a basis for discussing the place of the Shoah in shaping history and culture. Although the exhibition clusters along thematic lines, the display also provides visitors with a chronological journey as these responses developed broadly over time.

The exhibition opens with the artwork of Mordechai Ardon. In this section the works express suffering, anger, rage, displacement—reflecting the reaction of artists, survivors and others of their generation, immediately after the Shoah. A central group in this section deals with the twisted human body as an expression of suffering.

The second section opens with a Yigal Tumarkin artwork from the mid 1960s, when he was regarded as the avant-garde Israeli artist relating to the Shoah. This section, concerning the shaping of memory, is divided into different layers of memory and consciousness, including the artist’s attempt to experience the Holocaust as an individual, the collective experience of suffering and remembrance, and the relationship to both place and objects.

The third section opens with the artwork of Moshe Gershuni, who already in the 1980s gave expression to some of the issues characterizing the current debate in Israel regarding victims and perpetrators, Israeli and Jewish heritage, and the language of remembrance, symbolism, and identity. This section is comprised primarily, though not exclusively, of young artists concerned with questioning the existing iconography of the Shoah—examining the basic concepts of evil, victims, and perpetrators.

Yehudit Shendar is the Senior Art Curator in the Museums Division, and Sorin Heller is a Guest Curator of the “Etched Voices” Exhibit.

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