NAME
Adel Abdessemed
To mark the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Shoah Memorial has asked contemporary artist Adel Abdessemed to present a group of works entitled "Mon enfant": a beautiful sculpture and three large drawings made specially for an exhibition based on the emblematic photograph No. 14 that S.S Jürgen Stroop sent to Krüger and Himmler documenting the crushing of the insurrection in April-May 1943. Alongside the photograph’s historical value, the physicality of Abdessemed’s sculpture, its almost living density and delicacy, bring out the poignant, universal figure of a brutally doomed childhood, surrender and terror. Reactivating this image, notably through drawings that “deconstruct” it, he questions its controversial meaning, but also and above all pays tribute to the child, conferring, he says, "the immortality of the work of art” upon him.

Mon enfant

The Shoah Memorial, Paris

April 5 - May 14 2023

Mon enfant

The Shoah Memorial, Paris

April 5 - May 14 2023

To mark the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Shoah Memorial has asked contemporary artist Adel Abdessemed to present a group of works entitled "Mon enfant": a beautiful sculpture and three large drawings made specially for an exhibition based on the emblematic photograph No. 14 that S.S Jürgen Stroop sent to Krüger and Himmler documenting the crushing of the insurrection in April-May 1943. Alongside the photograph’s historical value, the physicality of Abdessemed’s sculpture, its almost living density and delicacy, bring out the poignant, universal figure of a brutally doomed childhood, surrender and terror. Reactivating this image, notably through drawings that “deconstruct” it, he questions its controversial meaning, but also and above all pays tribute to the child, conferring, he says, "the immortality of the work of art” upon him.