Migration, Memory and the Visual Arts: Second-Generation (Jewish) Artists

This symposium focuses on visual art by international (Jewish) artists of the post-Holocaust generation.

Whilst notions of post-memory (Hirsch) and prosthetic memory (Landsberg) have become a critical focus of attention in Holocaust literature, comparatively little attention has been paid to these concepts in the field of visual arts, where artwork by the so-called ‘second generation’ (i.e. children of Jewish refugees or Holocaust survivors) has not been systematically explored. This online symposium therefore aims to set out a new interdisciplinary research agenda, looking at how second-generation (Jewish) artists have engaged with the Holocaust, with the first-generation experience, and with related issues of migration, memory and identity. The event brings together academics from different disciplines as well as artists, curators and educational practitioners, to explore how subjects and themes relating to the second-generation experience have been examined and mediated through visual means in art (painting, drawing, sculpture, print-making, installations, photography and other lens-based media). Discussions will explore the reading and symbolic meaning of key topoi (e.g. cultural heritage, memory, absence, genealogy, migration), genres (e.g. landscapes, portraiture) and material processes (e.g. use of photographs and archival materials) in second-generation art, at an individual and collective level. The event will draw together international perspectives from the UK, the Netherlands, Israel and the USA.

Programme
Friday 7 May, BST

9:15-9:30: Opening: Dr Fransiska Louwagie (University of Leicester)

9:30-10:45: Keynote
Dr Glenn Sujo (author and curator of Legacies of Silence: The Visual Arts and Holocaust Memory, Imperial War Museum), Young Blood and the Exterminatory Idea: A Continuum?

Respondent: Monica Bohm-Duchen (Insiders/Outsiders Festival)
Chair: Dr Imogen Wiltshire (University of Leicester)

(15-minute break)

11:00-12:00: Panel 1: Second-Generation Artists in Search of their Roots
- Rachel Dickson (Ben Uri Museum and Gallery, London), ‘In and out of each other’s worlds’: The Art of Helga Michie and Ruth Rix
- Eliad Moreh-Rosenberg (Yad Vashem, Jerusalem), In Search of a Lost Childhood: Holocaust, Memory and Filiation in Sigalit Landau’s Works

Panel 1 Chair: Dr Jutta Vinzent (University of Birmingham)

(60-minute lunch break)

13:00-14:30: Panel 2: Art-Making, Process and Identity
- Judy Goldhill and Fay Ballard, Inner Recreation: Psychoanalysis and Second-Generation Visual Arts
- Lorna Brunstein and Katie O’Brien (44AD Artspace, Bath), Inherited Trauma, Place, Embodied Memory and Artistic Practice – Conversation
- Monica Petzal, Memory, Time and Printmaking

Panel 2 Chair: Dr Judith Tucker (University of Leeds)

(30-minute break)

15:00-16:00: Panel 3: Memory Projects
- Dr Maarten van der Heijden (JOMA, Amsterdam), The Jewish Second Generation Art & Family Museum Amsterdam (JOMA): A Personal and Collective Memory Project
- Dr Alexandra Karl, Portrait Pebbles: A Holocaust Education Project for Middle Schoolers and Beyond

Panel 3 Chair: Dr Paul Moore (Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Leicester)

(20-minute break)

16:20-17:20: Panel 4: (Re)creating Narratives between History and Memory
- Betsy Inlow (University of Leicester), Visual Narratives of Identity: The Creative Process of Third-Generation Comic Artist Miriam Libicki
- Joël J. Cahen, Maps, Models, Memory: Second-Generation Art in the Netherlands

Panel 4 Chair: Dr Svenja Bethke (Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Leicester)

17:20-17:35: Concluding remarks: Dr Imogen Wiltshire (University of Leicester)

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This event is co-organised by Dr Imogen Wiltshire and Dr Fransiska Louwagie and is generously supported by the Association for Art History (AAH), Cultural Literacy Everywhere (CLE), the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

The symposium is open to all and free to attend. Please register via:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/migration-memory-and-the-visual-arts-second-generation-jewish-artists-tickets-141807129943