H (Reconstruction of the Position)

[…] The relationship between evidence, memory and trauma is investigated by Agnieszka Mastalerz in a video shot in the former Bersohn and Bauman Children’s Hospital in Warsaw, which in the 1940s was situated inside a small ghetto. In this work, the choreography performed by an 11-year-old girl is based on archival photographs from the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial in Hamburg, taken in 1945. Dozens of black-andwhite images show the chests and hands, sometimes raised by an adult, of children transported to Hamburg from KZ Auschwitz in order to carry out research on tuberculosis. By setting this tragic documentation in motion, Mastalerz points to the relationship between medicine and violence that leads to dehumanisation, simultaneously posing questions about the role of memory and identity in the contemporary definition of development and progress. […]

Małgorzata Miśniakiewicz: Concealed. In: Art Reviev SURVIVAL 17. Catalogue, Wrocław 2019, p. 38-39.

photo: Małgorzata Kujda