Landscape of our Memory

A haunting and original exhibition about the Holocaust by Prague artists Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac.

Cosponsored and co-produced by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and in collaboration with Stockton University.

The Landscape of our Memory is a long-term artistic project that addresses the “dispersed Holocaust” or “Holocaust by Bullets” by commemorating the more than 2 million individuals who were killed in or near their hometowns rather than in major extermination camps. Inspired by the work of academics studying the Environmental History of the Holocaust (a relatively new sub-field of Holocaust studies), the artists use multiple antique and contemporary strategies to, in the words of the late Austrian historian Martin Pollack, “restore the names, faces and stories” of those tragically lost.  Initial work was created under the auspices of two Fulbright Scholar grants in Poland, but the project now includes commemorations of those who lost their lives at the Terezin transit camp in the Czech Republic and will soon expand to other locations, including sites in Ukraine and Slovakia. Because every artistic technique is deeply rooted in the landscape, the project has an important environmental sensibility and begins a conversation about the relationship between genocide and ecocide. The artists believe that this will better prepare us to avoid future genocides and ecocides, including the possible extinction of the human race as a result of war or the climate crisis.

This exhibition will be on view in the Kresge Gallery in the Berrie Center. An opening reception will be held Wednesday, September 16, from 5-7 P.M.

There will be an informal lecture by the artists about their careers on Thursday, 12:30 P.M. in the Adler Theater.

Image: Mark Isaac and Gabriela Bulisova, Untitled (Witness Tree), Okopowa Jewish Cemetery, Warsaw, Poland, 2024, analog photograph, 106 x 60 inches.