5 for 5:30pm

Please join the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, in partnership with the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Pretoria and the British High Commission in Pretoria, for a panel discussion with art historian and curator Dr Dorothea Schöne and artist Jessica Ostrowicz.

The discussion will explore how curatorial and artistic practice engages with the afterlives of the Holocaust, examining questions of memory, responsibility, and the ways histories marked by persecution and rupture continue to shape contemporary cultural and artistic discourse.

Dr Dorothea Schöne is a Berlin-based art historian and curator, currently serving as Director and CEO of Kunsthaus Dahlem. Under her leadership, Kunsthaus Dahlem – located in the former studio of Nazi-era sculptor Arno Breker – has become an important space for critically engaging with the complex legacies of art and ideology in twentieth-century Germany. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art and curatorial practice. Schöne has received numerous international research grants and fellowships and was awarded the Hans-and Lea-Grundig Prize for her work on artists targeted under National Socialism.

Jessica Ostrowicz is a British artist whose practice explores ideas of home, (be)longing, diasporic displacement, and transgenerational trauma. Working from the perspective of own Jewish family history, her work reflects on the ways experiences of persecution and migration shape personal and collective identities across generations. Her recent exhibition Remaining Without Returning reflects on her family’s history of flight, concealment, and survival during and after the Holocaust, and the lasting presence of this history in contemporary life. Ostrowicz has exhibited internationally, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Oaxaca, Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt, and the Nirox Foundation in South Africa.

Through a conversation between curator and artist, this event will consider how contemporary art and exhibition practices engage with difficult histories, and how memory of the Holocaust continues to be interpreted, represented, and worked through today.