ZUZANNA HERTZBERG
zuzanna.hertzberg@gmail.com / tel.+48/796-058-628
Zuzanna Hertzberg is an interdisciplinary artist, artivist, and researcher. Her art includes textiles, painting and counter-monumental artivist actions in public spaces. In her artistic practice she addresses the issues of the interweaving of individual and collective memory. She is the author of installations and collages using archival materials accompanied by performative counter-storytellings. She focuses on problems related to marginalization of minority groups and political mechanisms of erasing uncomfortable narratives – especially women’s – from historical memory. In her artistic strategies, archives become tools for recovering the truth about the past to advocate for social justice, while crafting messages that resonate in the present and inspire future change. Hertzberg’s artistic actions are guided by the spirit of an affective counter-archive, saturating her actions with motifs drawn from her own experience and personal perspective on history.
She is involved in individual and collective practices combating discrimination and violence against marginalized people and groups.
She earned her PhD degree at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts with the thesis Spaces of non–memory/Przestrzenie nie–wiedzy, 2018).
She participated in a numerous of exhibitions in Poland and abroad.
Volunteers for Freedom, her interdisciplinary art project about Jewish women in the International Brigades was presented as part of the exhibition “Niepodległe: Women, Independence and National Discourse” at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2018/19), at the exhibition “Difficult Pasts. Connected Worlds” at the Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga (2020/21), and then at the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius (2022) and Tallin Art Hall (2024).
Her research-based art-activist project titled Mechitza. Individual and Collective Resistance of Women during the Shoah was exhibited at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw (2019), as part of 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2022), at the Center for Jewish History in New York (2022/23), at the Mala Galerija in Ljubljana (2023), and within the „Materializing. Contemporary Art and the Shoah in Poland“ exhibition at the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism (2023).
In recent years, she has been developing a project dedicated to Jewish anarchists women. The work from this series, Jewish Anarchists Against Hegemony, was presented at the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2022) and at the Residency Unlimited in New York (2022). The textile triptych Ignite! was an important component of her solo exhibition “Women Fighters. An Affective Archive” at Studio Gallery in Warsaw (2023), and on display at Bozar Center for Fine Arts in Brussels.
Her recent works also feature the motif of the biblical Lilith, a rebel from Eden, through which Hertzberg translates the message of women’s autonomy into the current socio-political context.
Her artworks can be found in private and institutional collections.
She was a recipient of numerous awards and fellowships.
She is the co-founder of the Jewish Antifascist Block, a member of the board of the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland and a member of the Programme Board of the Jewish Historical Institute.
SOME LINKS:
https://ocula.com/magazine/spotlights/joanna-warsza-on-familiar-strangers-bozar-brussels/
https://www.monopol-magazin.de/bozar-bruessel-polen-vertraute-fremde
https://magazynrtv.com/en/wydanie-17/kanal-sztuki/i-summon-lilith-the-first-woman-the-woman-fighter-the-foremother-the-one-who-overturned-the-social-norm-set-for-women-at-the-very-moment-of-her-birth/
https://www.polityka.pl/tygodnikpolityka/historia/2292025,1,ocalali-odrzuceni-klopoty-zydow-nie-ustaly-z-koncem-wojny-o-tym-jest-wystawa-w-polin.read
https://polin.pl/en/zuzanna-hertzbergs-artivistic-performance-heroism-life-itself
https://ilmanifesto.it/forme-
https://teatrstudio.pl/en/galeria/wystawy/zuzanna-hertzberg-women-fighters-an-affective-archive/
https://audycje.tokfm.pl/gosc/20198,Zuzanna-Hertzberg
https://programs.cjh.org/archive/zuzanna-hertzberg-2022-12-22
Meet Over Lunch: A conversation between Zuzanna Hertzberg and Shira Backer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5U69Bnz_Js
https://12.berlinbiennale.de/artists/zuzanna-hertzberg/
https://12.berlinbiennale.de/
secondaryarchive.org/artists/zuzanna-hertzberg/
balticworlds.com/nomadic-memory/
https://post.moma.org/how-to-talk-about-cultural-trauma-through-art-or-working-with-difficult-pasts/?fbclid=IwAR32F85w4l1bSk2KNd2UZzAbz4aczZc-GG-1sBSi0FArH65nQ6xaJs9pHV8
vogue.pl/a/girls-dont-ask-zuzanna-hertzberg
https://wyborcza.pl/podcast/0,172673.html?podcast=104459
https://www.facebook.com/polinmuseum/videos/4011210985566816/
https://www.mixcloud.com/radiokapital/radio-kapita%C5%82-kt%C3%B3r%C4%99dy-do-wyj%C5%9Bcia-6-zuzanna-hertzberg-2021-02-19/
https://soundcloud.com/lmc_lcca/4-z-hertzberg-volunteers-for