Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival. Lecture by Natalia Romik

OFF-Biennale Budapest proudly presents the first public event leading up to its upcoming edition to be opened in May 2025.

 

Sculpture representing the Józef Oak tree, photo: Daniel Chrobak, Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw 2022.

On 29 October 2024 at 6 p.m., public historian, architect and artist Natalia Romik will present her ongoing project Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival at the Polish Institute in Budapest. The project developed in the context of the Polish memory battles regarding the Jewish experience of hiding during WWII. Romik will speak about the research, the resulting exhibition and also how the total invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the refugee crisis on the Poland-Belarus border has turned her work harrowingly contemporary.

In Poland and Ukraine during World War II, approximately 50,000 people survived persecution by the German occupying forces in hiding. The majority of them were Jewish. They found refuge in tree hollows, closets, basements, sewers, empty graves, and other precarious locations. Natalia Romik’s exhibition Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival pays tribute to these fragile places of refuge and explores their physicality. The show poses basic questions about the relationship between architecture, private life, and the public sphere: it addresses the protective function of spaces and emphasizes the creativity those in hiding brought to bear in their attempt to survive.

In a research project extending over several years, Natalia Romik and an interdisciplinary team of researchers consulted oral histories to identify several hiding places, which they explored using forensic methods. The multimedia exhibition Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival presents the results of this research. It consists of sculptures bearing a direct connection to the sites and includes documentary films, forensic recordings, photos, documents, and objects found in the hiding places.

Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival has been presented in cooperation with the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, the TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Szczecin and the Jewish Museum Frankfurt with a catalogue published in German and English editions by Hatje Cantz Verlag.

The inaugural event and the following Q&A will be introduced and moderated by Lívia Páldi curator. The collaboration between the artist and OFF is planned to continue in the framework of OFF 2025. The programme is also an event of solidarity: it is part of Bridges of Solidarity, an international series of events around the exhibition Sense of Safety that is currently on view in Kharkiv, Ukraine, which brings attention to the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine through programmes by cultural institutions across Europe.

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