Chantal Akerman, Marianne Berenhaut, Sarah Kaliski and Julia Pirotte are artists. One makes films, the other sculptures. Another is a painter, the last a photographer. Four Jewish women. Coming from different generations, they emigrated or were born of stateless parents who fled Eastern Europe and the persecutions of the 1930s. All four lived in Brussels and have in common that they lived – directly or through their relatives – through the Occupation, that they saw and suffered deportations, that they lived through the disaster. 

Chantal, Marianne, Sarah and Julia are sisters. Sisters from other parents. They have survived, or simply lived, thanks to their own resilience. Like Ruth Elias, Ada Lichtman, Paula Biren and Hanna Marton, The Four Sisters who returned from the death camps and whose testimonies were collected by the filmmaker Claude Lanzmann in the late 1970s, they share the experience of the Shoah. They are custodians of a memory, made up of as many stories as of absences and incomplete words. A gap, a silence, a haunting which they inherited.

These artists have created works, languages, and ways of seeing in and around this hole in history, in their history. Evolving each in a singular world, Chantal, Marianne, Sarah and Julia have sometimes crossed paths, seen each other at the bend of an exhibition or a projection. These women have built themselves with a strength and a commitment that make them today’s models of life and freedom. As Jews, they have questioned the weight of belonging and transmission, the power of a scattered and diasporic culture.

Four Sisters is a choral exhibition that follows the gaze of these four figures, whose lives, placed end to end, cover an entire century of history, where events and places, destruction and emancipation, political transformations and intimate experimentations are connected. Combining works and archives, images and texts, monographic presentations and collective arrangements, Four Sisters interweaves the threads of these life stories in a weaving fashion extending into the present, through the punctuated participation of artists from a younger generation. Within Four Sisters, in the details and folds, memories mingling with fiction, there are gestures, times and fragments whose echoes resonate and compose new patterns, like a memory that can only be formed in sharing.

This exhibition project is realized in partnership with Bozar, the Museum of Photography of Charleroi, the C.A Foundation and the Polish Institute Brussels.

This exhibition offers an artistic take on an exceptional episode in the history of the Second World War. On 19 April 1943, the Twentieth convoy left the Mechelen transit camp for Auschwitz, with 1,631 Jewish deportees on board. Thanks to acts of resistance onboard and an attack by the resistance along the way, 236 of these deportees managed to jump off the train that was carrying them to their extermination.  

The photographer Jo Struyven (b. Sint-Truiden, 1961) reflects on this unique act of rebellion in Western Europe under Nazi administration, showing us the landscapes in which this little-known story took place. These photographs constitute a contemporary “memorial”, providing a response to the indifference that characterises these stripped landscapes today. Although they seem devoid of human presence, they were nevertheless infused with (in)humanity.  

Two paintings by Luc Tuymans (b. Mortsel, 1958), which also evoke the destruction of the European Jews and Romani, engage in a dialogue with these photos. In his work, Tuymans has repeatedly explored the relationship between individuals and history, confronting them with their ability to ignore it. The persecution during the Second World War emerged as a theme in his painting practice in the late 1970s. 

“To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”, the German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno famously said in 1949. The exhibition raises the question of whether art is (im)possible after the Holocaust, through the perspectives of two visual artists. 

Organised in partnership with the Auschwitz Foundation, this exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue book (to be published on 19 April 2023), as well as an educational area presenting the testimonies of escapees from the 20th deportation convoy.

Luc Tuymans, Our New Quarters, 1986, oil on canvas, 80.5 x 120 cm (MMK -Germany)

Luc Tuymans, Die Wiedergutmachung, 1989. Oil on board, mounted on plywood,
Oil on canvas; diptych, 36.6 x 43 cm, 39.4 x 51.8 cm (Private collection)

In partnership with PhotoBrussels Festival

This exhibition, Moroccan women – Between ethic and aesthetic, – an original creation of the Centre de la Culture Judéo-Marocaine – revisits the rules of appearance in Moroccan aesthetics, explores the ethics and customs imposed on women as well as the motivations – still at work – of these highly codified customs.

For the first time, ancient productions and recent creations are put in dialogue, in a rich narrative journey presenting a large quantity of objects dating from the 16th century to the present day: traditional and cultic objects, clothes, ornaments, talismans and jewels, archival documents, photographs and drawings, orientalist paintings coming from the Dahan-Hirsch Collection, which holds a special place in the safeguarding of Morocco’s cultural and civilizational heritage, whose great historical and affective value we measure here.

Jacques Aron (Antwerp 1933), architect and urban planner, has taught the history and theory of these disciplines. An honorary professor at the University, he has always devoted himself to writing and visual arts. He is also the author of numerous works on architecture, philosophy and Jewishness, particularly in German-speaking countries.

From the 1990s onwards, he tried his hand at collage, initially on paper but soon in digital form. This artistic practice complements his research into an overall philosophical conception of the European Jewish condition.

Passionate about painting and the history of Western painting, this self-taught artist seized a creative opportunity: the sculpture on the beach at Ostend by the artist Kris Martin, which, in oxidised steel, reproduces the shape of the frame of the polyptych of the Mystic Lamb by the Van Eyck brothers.

The beach altar in Ostend is a nod to the name given by Kris Martin to his sculpture planted on the beach in front of the Palais des Thermes hotel. This empty frame offers walkers the chance to use it as windows evoking different seascapes that change with the light of day and the seasons.

Or perhaps it is an enigma for them, or a structure that they can use as a support for physical exercise, or even to take a photo souvenir, or to photograph themselves in the contemporary age of selfies?

In this series of collages, he links the idea of the empty frame to that of the death of God, as written by Nietzsche in particular. Once the frame is empty, the collage artist’s imagination is free to fill it with a multitude of themes, sometimes drawn from the works of other famous painters such as Ensor, Magritte, Bruegel, Poussin, Géricault, Millet, and others, who rub shoulders with some of the characters of the Van Eyck brothers, or other themes born of his extensive literary culture.

Through the various works on display, visitors are invited to try and work out which artists feature in which collages.

The Arie Mandelbaum exhibition is an original creation of the Jewish Museum of Belgium. Fre-
quently exhibited, the work of painter Arié Mandelbaum (°1939, Brussels) had not yet been the
subject of a retrospective. For the first time, old productions and recent creations engage in dia-
logue here, in a journey which starts in 1957 and ends in 2016.

Arié Mandelbaum, the son of Polish Jewish immigrants, began painting at the age of sixteen. As
from the early 1960s, he was considered one of the most promising talents in Belgian painting. His
idiosyncratic and compelling oeuvre continued to develop over the decades that followed. After
the heightened expressionism of his early days, greater restraint followed as of the 1980s, giving
rise to works of disturbing fragility, which he has created to this day.

The exhibition is structured around different themes. We first discover the way in which the artist
deals with intimacy, before politics – especially the anti-authoritarian protest of 1968 – telescopes
his soul-searching. The visit continues with the exploration of the self-portrait and the body, two
themes through which we see the work of Arié Mandelbaum transform into a reflection on trace,
absence and erasure. Political violence, particularly related to (neo)colonialism, then made a
marked return in his work. Over the past two decades, it has become increasingly influenced by
the memory of the Shoah – as a return to what was repressed in this child of the war, who will re-
main a rebel painter all his life.

The works presented come from the collections of the Jewish Museum of Belgium, but also from
institutions such as the Museum of Ixelles, the Museum of the National Bank of Belgium or the
collections of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. A number of private collections have also been
mobilized, in particular those of private individuals and the Belfius Art Collection.

Arié Mandelbaum, Untitled, 1987, 150 x 162 cm, mixed technique on canvas, Hugo Godderis collection, Veurne
© Jan Van Goidsenhoven

Arié Mandelbaum, L’Amandier de Fontenoille, 1989, 162 x 150 cm, acrylic on canvas, Hugo Godderis collection, Veurne © Jan Van Goidsenhoven

Arié Mandelbaum, Le canapé vert n°1, 1968, 1220 x 720 cm, oil and coloured chalk on paper, collection of the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Mon © coll. Communauté française de Belgique

Arié Mandelbaum, The Assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Maurice M’Polo and Joseph Okito – 2 – The Villa Brouwez, 2011, 180 x 210 cm, charcoal and coloured chalk on paper mounted on canvas, Jewish Museum of Belgium, Brussels © Anass El Azhar Idrissi

The Jewish Museum of Belgium is pleased to present a new exhibition devoted to the American conceptual artist Sol LeWitt (1928-2007). The exhibition is organized by Barbara Cuglietta and Stephanie Manasseh in collaboration with the artist’s family.
Through a unique selection of Wall Drawings, works on paper, gouaches, structures and archives dating from the 1960s to the 2000s, this exhibition aims to highlight the diversity and unity in Sol LeWitt’s prolific work. It will feature a double “premiere”: an exploration of his Jewish heritage and an investigation of his links with Belgium. It will also be accompanied by the launch of the new Sol LeWitt app created by Microsoft.

Exhibition

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, into a Jewish immigrant family from Russia, Solomon (Sol) LeWitt is one of the pioneers of conceptual and minimal art, best known for his Wall Drawings. Although he is not religious, leading a secularized life, Sol LeWitt has maintained discreet but tenacious links with his Jewish heritage throughout his life. In the 1990s, he became actively involved in his community in Chester, Connecticut, designing the new synagogue for the Reform Congregation Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek, which was inaugurated in 2001. For Sol LeWitt, designing a synagogue was “a problem of geometric forms in a space that conforms to ritual usage”. With the help of archives, drawings, photographs and testimonials, the exhibition explores the genesis of this major project, which has remained little known to the public until now.

The exhibition also addresses another forgotten aspect of Sol LeWitt’s career: the close relationships he developed throughout his career with collectors, gallery owners and artists based in Belgium. Visitors will be able to discover Wall Drawing #138, first shown in Brussels at the MTL gallery – which played a pioneering role in introducing conceptual art to Belgium – as well as Sol LeWitt’s collaboration with architect Charles Vandenhove on the design of the University Hospital in Liège.

All the works shown in the exhibition come from Belgian public and private collections, as well as from the LeWitt Collection. As for the realization of the Wall Drawings, directly on the walls of the Jewish Museum of Belgium, it is the occasion of an exceptional participative experience, bringing together alongside professional draftsmen from the LeWitt studio young artists and art students based in Brussels. For each mural, teams are formed around a professional assistant who accompanies and guides the apprentices. This educational initiative is a unique opportunity for the latter to be involved in the creative process of one of the greatest American artists.

Finally, the exhibition at the Jewish Museum of Belgium is the occasion for the European launch of a smartphone application dedicated to the artist and his work, developed by Microsoft with the LeWitt Collection. True to Sol LeWitt’s desire to make art accessible to all, this app will offer visitors an immersive and educational experience unlike any other.

Wall Drawing #528G, 1987, india ink and color ink wash. Installation view at the Jewish Museum of Belgium (c) Private Collection, Belgium / Picture: Hugard & Vanoverschelde

https://youtu.be/OjjIhglAcjw

Born in Brussels in 1950, Julien Friedler is the son of Jewish parents from Transylvania (now Romania). His work is deeply atypical, designed to move and be transformed. 

The cycle of paintings on paper presented in this exhibition takes us on an intimate journey, in the form of free associations, which Julien Friedler renders in a powerful, suggestive, archetypal work. The work is an introspective daydream, an imaginary transcription of an ambiguous reality that moves from wonder to disenchantment, from radiance to the disquieting expression of the dark forces that inhabit it. The evocations born of this quasi-hypnotic plunge into the unconscious world are revealed through gesture and color, to be inscribed in an almost automatic writing, like an instinctive trace, on paper.

Why do you stand at the door? is the result of research carried out in 2021 and 2022 by Ukrainian artist Nikolay Karabinovych (°1988, Odesa*) at the Jewish Museum of Belgium. In “Project Space”, video, sound, text and installation by this multidisciplinary artist are placed in dialogue with publications from the 1920s-1930s preserved in the museum’s Yiddish library, as well as with objects from Jewish heritage.

The title of the exhibition Why do you stand at the door? is taken from the popular Yiddish song “Lomir Zikh Iberbetn” (Let’s reconcile). The lyrics are a call for reconciliation in love, as much as a reference to the fear of the other’s leaving. The verse is used here as a metaphor for the migration of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, a forced nomadism also found in the Yiddish books of the Jewish Museum of Belgium. These books provide a starting point for the poetic exploration of a forgotten collective memory. Particular attention will be paid to the testimonies of Yiddish women and authors of the interwar period, whose books shed light on a history of migration sidelined by national narratives and myths.

Working in partnership with curator Patricia Couvet (°1994, Paris), Nikolay Karabinovych seeks to bring together objects and archival documents with sources that are not referenced by institutions, with a view to valorizing what is not perceptible and unearthing invisible narratives. This approach enables us to rewrite a collective history, at a time when one of the foundations of that history – Yiddish, the quintessential diasporic language – seems to be disappearing. It also provides a framework for understanding the personal experiences of forced migration, past and present. It reminds us that, in every era, the artist is a witness to his own time: a critical source of historiography, he makes visible the cracks in a history that we cannot ignore as it unfolds every day in Kyiv, Odesa, Bucha, Kharkiv and Mariupol.

*Most Ukrainian city names have historically been translated from Russian into other languages. In this text and in the exhibition, we have taken the decolonial approach of keeping the names of the towns in Ukrainian.

© Isabelle Arthuis

“A collection is a state of mind.” Galila Barzilai Hollander

“Works on Paper” offers an incursion into the teeming universe of Galila Barzilai Hollander, a Belgian collector born in Tel Aviv. For the past fifteen years, this extraordinary personality has been assembling works of contemporary art into a collection that tells the story of her own life: underpinning the works brought together is a compelling desire to reinvent the self.

The exhibition offers a clear cut through this plethoric universe, presenting a selection of works on paper. Visitors discover how international artists (Jonathan Callan, Jae Ko, Anish Kapoor, William Klein, Angela Glajcar, Andrea Wolfensberger, Brian Dettmer, Haegue Yang and others) reinvent this everyday, commonplace material into unexpectedly powerful art objects. Collages, sculptures, inscriptions, installations and jewelry are all on display, reminiscent of the collector’s ex-centric personality, but also offering a reflection on the art of diversion. Here, work on paper becomes a realm of detour, where each work plays with our perception as much as our judgments.

© Jonathan Callan, Art around Mythology around Global Strategy, 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqdF3GWSBm0

From October 15, 2021 to March 31, 2022, the Jewish Museum of Belgium presents its new educational project “Caricatured Imagery of Jews throughout History. Outline of an unusual collection”.

Through an overview of the extraordinary collection assembled by Arthur Langerman, an Antwerp-born Belgian born in the middle of the war, it offers a glimpse into the collective madness represented by visual anti-Semitism, a phenomenon that is tracked here across continents and centuries. From pagan and religious anti-Judaism to social and political anti-Semitism, this didactic project presents an original and striking look at the representation of Jews, from the Middle Ages to the present day, and the stereotypes attached to them.

The presentation of multiplex-printed facsimiles includes paintings, engravings, wooden statuettes, photographs, archives, posters and postcards, as well as unusual objects such as beer mugs, kennels, enamel plates, ashtrays and matchboxes. While offering images from all origins, the designers have chosen to focus particularly on “Belgian” illustrations: from the alleged desecration of the hosts in Brussels (1370) to the textile vignettes made by some of the actors at the Aalst Carnival, Belgium is not to be outdone.

The panels are accompanied by objects and archives from the collections of the Jewish Museum of Belgium. A video module, dedicated to the collector Arthur Langerman, reveals his personal story, shedding light on his atypical career and his motivation, driven by the duty of remembrance.

The Jewish Museum of Belgium presents this project as part of its Educational Service, accredited by the “Democracy or Barbarism” department of the Wallonia-Brussels federation. À travers des visites guidées, le service éducatif propose d’interroger l’utilisation de stéréotypes, hier et comme aujourd’hui. Our “Let’s meet a Jew” workshops, in particular the “Myths and Stereotypes” activity, will be offered in conjunction with this educational exhibition, as will the possibility of organizing a meeting with a witness to the Holocaust.

The exhibition

Combining photographs, videos and manuscripts, the exhibition places at its heart a space-time as precise as it is emblematic: the island of Lesbos in the year 2020. Situated in the Aegean Sea, a few kilometers off the Turkish coast, this island experienced a succession of crises in 2020, making it a nodal point in our history and consciousness. It is in this context that the Jewish Museum of Belgium has conceived this exhibition, an original creation that explores themes that reflect the long history of Jewish communities: exile, violence and solidarity.

Shown here for the first time, Mathieu Pernot’s work on Lesbos in 2020 is part of a long-term project. For over ten years, the photographer has been tackling the issue of migration and the presence of asylum seekers on the European continent. While the first images reflected the invisibility of these individuals, hidden under sheets in the streets of Paris or chased out of the forest of Calais, the series produced subsequently explore new forms of shared narratives. By collecting texts written in school notebooks or receiving images recorded on their cell phones, the author also acts as a conduit for “other people’s lives”, showing how this life, even before being that of others, is a shared History that must be told together.

Winner of the Prix Cartier-Bresson 2019, Pernot follows the approach of documentary photography, ultimately subverting its protocols. Questioning his own practice, exploring alternative formulas, his work builds what is so often missing: narratives with several voices.

Publication

Published by GwinZegal and produced as part of the “Something is Happening” exhibition organized by the Jewish Museum of Belgium, “Something is Happening. Lesbos 2020” is on sale at our museum reception desk.

Coming off the press in May 2021, this book immerses us in Mathieu Pernot’s photographic work with migrants in the Moria camp. In this pictorial narrative, the winner of the 2019 Cartier-Bresson prize takes us, chapter by chapter, “On the path”, “Crossing the footbridge”, “Building a shelter”, “Making a fire”, “Waiting”. The book shifts gears, showing us “What happens” when everything is suddenly destroyed by an act of despair reminiscent of classical tragedy, and all that’s left is to “Save what can be saved” and “Start all over again”.

As a prelude to the retrospective of French photographer Mathieu Pernot, from April 30 the Jewish Museum of Belgium presents a group exhibition featuring works by Armando Andrade Tudela, Marianne Berenhaut, Heidi Bucher, Miriam Cahn, Latifa Echakhch, Sigalit Landau, Alina Szapocznikow, Naama Tsabar et Lawrence Weiner.

A project by Eloi Boucher in collaboration with the Jewish Museum of Belgium

Ellis Island is “that narrow sandbar at the mouth of the Hudson”, an islet facing Manhattan. It was the main point of entry for many communities arriving on American soil between 1892 and 1924. Nearly sixteen million emigrants – mostly from Europe, but also from Arab countries – passed through here, undergoing a series of medical and psychological examinations, as well as a change of identity. Georges Perec, a writer of Polish-Jewish origin, offers us a detailed description of this “non-place” in a text written in 1979. A utopian place where we forget ourselves, where our bodies and identities are transformed, a place where we also leave room for dreams and the hope of a better world.

Following on from Perec’s story, the exhibition at the Jewish Museum of Belgium focuses on how contemporary artists deal with the theme of exile, and how they confront the world as a place of dispersion, confinement and wandering. Ellis Island explores uprootedness and emigration as a mental or physical state, but also as a creative “catalyst” where artistic processes of assemblage and fragmentation are brought into play.