Under Your White Stars. Varda Getzow

Israeli artist Varda Getzow's artwork often centres around memory. She is a representative of the “second generation”, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, which makes the themes of war, the Holocaust, and post-memory constantly present in her work,

Most often, this is due to conditions related to the place of presentation or installation of the work. This is also the case with her solo exhibition “Under Your White Stars”, shown in Krakow. The Holocaust forms the context of the presented works through two historical places: Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory and KL Plaszow Memorial Site. However, the artist approaches the subject somewhat differently, in a more universal perspective, making children and their suffering the motif of her works. The works on display address the post-memory of the Holocaust not through a direct message, but by evoking a sense of horror, disruption, alienation and ambivalence in the viewer. The contact with Varda Getzow's art is based on the emotions aroused not by the image itself, but also by everything that is deliberately left out.

Varda Getzow's drawings depict children, often lonely, crippled, helpless, and abandoned. Their somewhat conventional images are contrasted with a section of the exhibition presenting archival photographs of Jewish children from the interwar period. The photographs, taken in Poland, show the children at play, studying, celebrating holidays and important family occasions, in their familiar surroundings. The children, although still anonymous, have faces, and thus - gain subjectivity in the eyes of the viewer.

Both the location of the exhibition and the evocation of a poem by Abraham Sutzkever, written in the Vilna Ghetto, in the exhibition title inextricably link Varda Getzow's works to the fate of the children murdered during the Holocaust. However, the author draws attention to the universality of the problem – in our modern times, the suffering of children as a result of armed conflicts is still a topical and unresolved issue.

The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual catalogue by curator Dr. Dalia Manor. The publication includes an essay by the curator on Varda Getzow's work, both her Krakow solo exhibition and her earlier works. The book is enriched with numerous reproductions of Varda Getzow's works and her artistic biography.