In the WARSTWY [LAYERS] project, students grappled with the history of Lodz's Jewish residents, reinterpreting the testimonies of Holocaust survivors. Their works do not directly reconstruct the past; rather, they create spaces for dialogue between memories and the city's contemporary topography, revealing what lies beneath the surface of the present.
The creators drew on archival recordings of interviews with survivors, recorded in the 1990s by Paweł Spodenkiewicz – a journalist from Lodz and a writer. They chose places that particularly moved them – everyday spaces such as an apartment, library, shop, or school, but also places with a strong symbolic charge: a cemetery, a prison, a ritual bathhouse. Their artistic interventions – multimedia installations, sound works and activities in public spaces – revive the memories of former residents, making them a living, critical element of the contemporary cityscape.
Contributors: Agnieszka Chojnacka, Borys Górski, Piotr Kusiak, Anna Ligęza, Anna Nowak, Mikołaj Nowosad
Content supervision: Prof. Artur Chrzanowski, Dr Adam Sitarek
Production: Magdalena Kamińska
Graphic design: Polkadot Studio Graficzne
Organisers and partners
The Philip Friedman Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Lodz – a research unit operating within the Faculty of Philosophy and History of the university is the organiser of the event. The Centre focuses on research on the history of Jews in Poland, particularly in the Lodz region and conducts scientific, educational and cultural projects. It also maintains archival and oral history resources related to the Jewish community of Lodz. Philip Friedman – a distinguished historian, Holocaust survivor, and an author of foundational works on the history of Polish Jews, is the unit's patron.
The exhibition partners include the Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts Łódź and the Marek Edelman Dialogue Center in Łódź. The project is implemented as part of the "Topografia pamięci. Mapowanie żydowskiej Łodzi" [Topography of Memory. Mapping Jewish Lodz] programme, funded by Stiftung EVZ (Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft Foundation).
The "Warstwy. Topografia pamięci" exhibition is an invitation to explore the traces of the past in the fabric of contemporary Lodz – a city whose Jewish history remains one of its most important, yet often hidden, dimensions.
