Trauma Space Therapy

Holocaust Memorial 2015
Curator: István Bársony
Exhibition duration: 28th of November 2014 – 18th of January 2015
Klauzál square, Budapest, HU

Gábor Koós was invited by the City of Budapest to create a site-specific work on the occasion of the anniversary of the WWII Jewish ghetto in Pest. His artwork consisted of a large-scale frottage from clothes symbolizing human bodies and reflecting on the fact that the square where the exhibition takes place is a former cemetery where Jews were buried. Koós’s work is a statement against forgetting – placed on the door at the exit of the exhibition space, people need to walk over the work (on a white area, not over the printed bodies itself), and thus are directly confronted with the traumatic past of the square.

From the official statement of curator István Bársony:
"In the exhibition entitled TRAUMA – SPACE – THERAPY, the reflections of contemporary artists are linked to the contingencies of personal memories, artistic transcriptions and subjective reinterpretations. The artists are members of the “third generation” after the Holocaust. What they share is that they all react to Klauzál Square in an indirect way, with their own artistic instruments, styles, and methods. For the artists, this urban landscape is something more than and different from a “simple” historical site. In these works of art, the rediscovery of layers of both old times and the recent past together with the present is expressed through the dialectics of oblivion and exploration, while they also tell their audience about the ghetto, the Holocaust, the past, the present, and, most of all, the future of Klauzál Square.”