Scene Study
Shir Cohen, Gosia Kołdraszewska
18 Jan - 8 Feb
PV: 18 Jan 6-9pm
exhibition open Wed-Sat 11-6 or by appointment
Scene Study is a duo exhibition by Shir Cohen and Gosia Kołdraszewska visualising tropes in Israeli state propaganda and exploring collective memory and use of trauma.
The artists’ backgrounds, being respectively Israeli and Polish, become a crucial point of reference for the presented works. Growing up in two cultures ingrained with the trauma of the Holocaust, Shir Cohen and Gosia Kołdraszewska examine its representation and use in social media which, amid lack of impartial media coverage, has become a crucial source of alternative information on the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people. Gosia presents a series of screen-prints ‘Selfie Macht Frei’ (2024-25), drawing parallels between tourists taking selfies at Auschwitz concentration camp and Israeli soldiers taking selfies in Gaza, while Shir shows painting and embroidery from the ‘Hasbara Series (Chickens for KFC)’ (2024), using tropes of Israeli Zionism and its propaganda.
What the artists find on social media can be described, borrowing from Milan Kundera’s Soviet propaganda critique, as totalitarian kitsch. A manipulation weaponising collective memory and shared trauma, where the images created are meant to represent an ideal – here offered as the only solution to the trauma – and where any question or doubt cast is an infringement on that ideal and betrayal to one and undividable collective identity.
Both Shir and Gosia in their work cast the doubt, often using dreadful irony to expose the kitsch. The images they form in response recontextualise the found propagandist imagery, and propose an alternative way of dealing with those traumas – one of nuance and solidarity with the oppressed.
The exhibition will be raising funds for a charity chosen by the artists.