Haunting new exhibit explores Holocaust memory through art
Textile, video, installation, photography, drawing and text form part of show curated and presented by Holocaust Centre North
An exhibition by contemporary artists in response to the collections, testimonies, and objects bequeathed to Holocaust Centre North by survivors who made new lives in the North of England, launches on 6 June until 28 June.
The Memorial Gestures programme, at the west Yorkshire museum’s University of Huddersfield base, gives leading and emerging creatives the opportunity to reflect on Holocaust commemoration.
Participants immersed themselves in Holocaust history through the Centre’s significant collection, by talking with survivors and their families, participating in bespoke workshops, and learning from historians and the Centre’s archivists.
Over the past three years, fourteen artists – Jordan Baseman, Laura Fisher, April Lin 林森 Maud Haya-Baviera, Irina Razumovskaya, Matt Smith, Ariane Schick, Tom Hastings, Rey Conquer, Hannah Machover, Laura Nathan, Chebo Roitter Pavez, Sierra Kaag, and Nathalie Olah – have participated in this one-of-a-kind, creative initiative launched in 2022.
Archive material: Holocaust Centre North Archive, courtesy of the Kubie family
The resulting exhibition is a unique body of work – incorporating works in textile, video, installation, photography, drawing, etching, ceramics, print, translation, found objects, and text created by a diverse group of artists who between them represent multiple nationalities, experiences and identities.
Featured works include large-scale woven blankets by textile artist Laura Fisher that reproduce in detail family messages from the Holocaust, including a final telegram sent to the family of Michelle Green from her Viennese grandmother who was killed in a concentration camp. Michelle’s family materials are held for posterity at Holocaust Centre North.
Artist Matt Smith’s ceramic tiles and photographic collages bring attention to the marginalised subject of LGBT+ experiences of the Holocaust – a subject often overlooked and underrepresented in Holocaust history.
Textile artist Laura Nathan, herself a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, explores the experiences of Jewish mill workers in Yorkshire, including at Kagan Textile Works, reflecting on familial trauma, migration and the making and unmaking of fabric and family histories.
As well as visual art, the work of resident writers and translators form part of the exhibition. Writers Tom Hastings, Rey Conquer, Sierra Kaag and Nathalie Olah were commissioned by the Centre and will share works in progress of their forthcoming book-length projects.
Exhibition curator Paula Kolar said: “We aim to humanise a history that contains what most of us can scarcely imagine — from unbearable loss, pain, and cruelty to courageous survival — through the preservation of personal testimonies and documents. Through colour, sound, texture, composition, repetition, and gesture, their works express what facts alone cannot.”
Alessandro Bucci, director of Holocaust Centre North added: “Memorial Gestures is the outcome of our ambitious residency programme –our response to some of the most pressing questions facing Holocaust memory today as we move further from living memory: such as how do we continue to remember the Holocaust with depth and relevance? How do we engage audiences with original materials while also honouring what was lost, destroyed, stolen, or never took an archivable form?”
- Memorial Gestures runs from Friday 6 to Saturday 28 June 2025 at The 1912 Mill at Sunny Bank Mills, Farsley, Pudsey, West Yorkshire.
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