In her multi-media work, the artist Talya Feldman investigates the continuities of right-wing terror in Germany from the 1980s to today. Hearing and listening are important aspects of the installation, which distances itself from the political instrumentalization of grieving and memory.
Feldman’s work includes voice recordings of survivors of right-wing, racist, and anti-Semitic violence, families of victims of terror, and initiatives that fight right-wing terror. The artist opens a panorama of pluralistic memory, making tangible the diversity of remembrance and eyewitness accounts.
Winner of the DAGESH Art Award For this piece, Talya Feldman was awarded the DAGESH Art Award and its 7,000-euro purse. The prize is awarded by the Jewish Museum Berlin and DAGESH: Jewish Art in Context. It raises the profile of new and diverse contemporary Jewish viewpoints, highlighting works that engage with current problems and questions of coexistence.
The eight-person jury selected the piece from 60 submissions related to the theme “Wehrhafte Kunst” (“Art That Can Put Up a Fight”).
“In Talya Feldman’s work, a unique diversity of voices makes memory come alive. Documentary eyewitness accounts meet personal reminiscence and are woven together in a way that is complex and striking. The installation tells of deadly violence, but also rage, resistance, solidarity, and resilience. With its combination of the highest artistic standards, pluralistic memory, speech, and demands, Tanya Feldman’s work embodies central aspects of Jewish self-assertion and the ability to put up a fight,”
explained the jury, which was made up of: Ilit Azoulay (visual artist), Sasha Marianna Salzmann (dramaturge and writer), Noam Brusilovsky (theater and radio play director), Hetty Berg (Director, JMB), Jo Frank (Director of Development, Leo Baeck Foundation), Gregor H. Lersch (Director of Exhibitions, JMB), Inka Bertz (Director of Collections, JMB), and Daniel Laufer (Curator, DAGESH).
The DAGESH Art Award will be presented on 20 May 2021 during a public digital prize ceremony.