Magdalena Ciemierkiewicz

The work intertwines the micro-histories of World War II and the contemporary context of the war in Ukraine, where natural deposits, such as fertile arable lands, once again become a natural witness to war crimes. “Chernozem” is an installation consisting of 12 handmade carpets that are a study of the matter of the earth. Combining the symbolism of a typical home décor element and fertile soil, it signals the still-present traumas of war and genocide in family, domestic, and social spaces. Unprocessed painful history have a destructive impact on family and social relationships for many generations after the war. Especially in rural and peripheral areas, these experiences remain unrehearsed for a long time.

One of the points of reference that are important to me are the so-called “non-places of memory” – locations marked by death but, for various reasons, never commemorated. These places are particularly numerous in rural areas of Central and Eastern Europe, as Martin Pollack has emphasized, calling them “tainted landscapes.”

https://soniakh.com/index.php/2023/01/24/magdalena-ciemierkiewicz-chernozem/