Photographic exhibition by student artists on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2024
Introduced by the Director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, Prof. Cecilia Casorati
Speakers:
The President of the Jewish Community of Rome, Victor Fadlun
Prof. Adachiara Zevi
Prof. Claudia R. Saso
Photographs by:
Antea Lucianetti
Simona Murrone
Luca Rotini
Ivan Luigi Surdo
The exhibition La memoria diffusa, curated by Prof. Claudia R. Saso, is held on the occasion of “Holocaust Remembrance Day”, which commemorates the opening of the gates of Auschwitz on 27 January 1945 around the world.
This year, the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome is organising a photography exhibition by students on the Photography and Video course. The aim is to make the public reflect on memory and history through the eyes of the new generations. The photos taken by the students focus on the “stumbling blocks”, which are associated only with shadows symbolising the absence-presence of the 1,022 people taken from the Rome ghetto on 16 October 1943 and deported to the extermination camps.
The “stumbling blocks” are a work in progress, still ongoing, by the German artist Gunter Demnig, which began in Rome in 2010, inspired by the many “stumbling blocks” already present in many European countries. The “stones” are incorporated into the paving of city streets, in front of the last homes of the victims of deportation. Small brass plaques are placed on the “stumbling blocks”, engraved with the year of birth, the name, the day and place of deportation and, if known, the date of death. To explain his work, Gunter Deming states: “A person is forgotten only when their name is forgotten”; the information, therefore, aims to restore individuality to those who had been reduced to nothing more than a number.
The photography exhibition by the student artists aims to restore, through images of great impact, a small part of a tragedy that must be known beyond the statistics and that tells of millions of people killed without reason or fault.
One of the objectives of the initiative is to highlight the importance of memory for building a more equitable future, in the belief that art is the most appropriate tool to make everyone – and not just students – reflect on the horrors and mistakes of history, beyond time.
With the patronage of:
Communications Office of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome
Coordination: Prof. Guglielmo Gigliotti g.gigliotti@abaroma.it
Collaboration: Chiara Picco, Marianna Pontillo comunicazione@abaroma.it