The Museum of the History of Polish Jews POLIN is hosting an exhibition of cut-outs and collages ‘Burning’ by Monika Krajewska until 18 December 2023. It accompanies the exhibition ‘A Sea of Fire Around Us’. In her works, the author reflects on the fate of Jewish religious objects, which were lost, looted or deliberately destroyed during the wars and a series of catastrophes that befell Jews.

The ‘Burning’ series consists of 31 works in which the artist refers to objects associated with synagogue worship and transfers them onto the traditional Jewish paper cut-out technique, painstakingly recreating the symbolism and ornamentation of Jewish art from Central and Eastern Europe: stylised floral decoration, symbolic representations of animals, a repertoire of traditional sacred symbols of Judaism (menorah, Torah and Tables of Commandments, Temple) and calligraphic quotations from religious texts and prayers.

The POLIN Museum emphasises that in order to introduce a reflection on loss and destruction, the artist subjects her painstaking work to destruction: after cutting out fragments of the works, she tears them apart and burns the ends of the sheets. She uses tinted paper as a background for the cut-outs, incorporating the motif of fire, ashes and ruins. She incorporates quotations from religious texts or classics of modern Jewish literature into the representations, in which there are references to flames and destruction, as well as to the hope of salvation.

‘The Burning series became my requiem for ceremonial objects annihilated along with the communities that created them, cared for them and hoped to pass them on to future generations’, says Monika Krajewska. “I wanted to honour the old masters of the paper cut-out, who tirelessly turned a white sheet of paper into a Garden of Eden full of fantastic animals’, adds the artist.

Adrian Andrzejewski