Artwork by Marion Kahnemann on Paideia alumni Chernobyl Project
In the centuries before the catastrophic 1986 nuclear disaster, the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl was the site of a vibrant Jewish community.
German Jewish artist Marion Kahnemann recently created a mixed-media series depicting the Chernobyl region and its Jewish past. “Hinter dem rücken der Zeit” (“Behind the Back of Time” – exhibit PDF here ) is her interpretation of the region’s history, in both its richness and its darkness, and her attempt to make sense of the past.
One piece, “Menetekel” (“Portent”) portrays a green-tinged field layered with Hebrew scripture and Ukrainian phrases, which hauntingly evokes a graveyard. Another, “Immer lebe die Sonne” (“The Sun Will Always Shine”) shows people standing in a row behind an overlay of wire fence. In “Königskinder” (“Royal Children”), one of the starkest pieces, a pair of ghostly, robotic children play-fight, while encased in what looks like a Torah Ark.
Kahnemann isn’t the only contemporary Jewish artist inspired by Chernobyl. In his 1996 film Saint Clara , the Israeli director Ari Folman (Waltz With Bashir) imagined a group of Chernobyl-born Israeli children who were granted telepathic powers by the explosion. Kahnemann, like Folman, has made a powerful, heartfelt contribution to our ongoing attempts to make sense of that tragic day.
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