Traces - Joanna Ostrowska
Joanna Ostrowska
During the residency in ZK/U Joanna “investigates” and researches biographies of people who were silent – or forced into silence – concerning their experiences during the Nazi time.
The volume Traces is a proposed collection of essays, the sources of which are selected visual documents (photos, files, maps, objects). Aside from the visual aspect – all the texts will be linked by the themes of the Second World War, the everyday experience of the occupation and the Holocaust. Each chapter (of historical reportage) deals with a biography, an anecdote erased from Polish collective memory.
Joanna’s “protagonists” do not exist in Polish familial or collective memory. However some of them were and still are not recognized also in Germany. They belong to groups which continue to be ‘excluded’ today (including LGBTQ+ individuals, victims and survivors of sexual violence, women fighting for the right to abortion, people with disabilities).