BITTER HERBS
The Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2025
The exhibition Bitter Herbs brings together three interconnected bodies of work. A series of large-scale wall pieces incorporates dried plants gathered from Holocaust memorial sites in Belarus, Lithuania, and Latvia. These are mixed with strands of natural human hair and sealed under layers of latex that carry the printed pigmentation of real human skin — a material technique developed by the artist. Each frame corresponds to a specific site of mass killing, with the plants forming a botanical atlas of that place.
The second medium emerged unexpectedly during the research process: magazines sent from Belarus, containing pressed plants, began to “speak” through visual encounters with printed images — soldiers, women, and newborns. These Herbal Atlases became collages in their own right. The third element of the exhibition is a two-channel video, By the Wayside Stands a Tree, filmed entirely with drones over unmarked mass graves. Wind, forests, and grasses become the only visible witnesses. The soundtrack is a Yiddish lullaby, Oyfn veg shteyt a boym, sung by Efim Chorny — a song of parting, tenderness, and fragile care.
Bitter Herbs is an invitation to recognise the fragile yet living roots of what history often tries to bury. It is an experience of memory that arises not from textbooks, but from the vein of a leaf, the grain of paper, the flash of silver in a photograph.
Curated by: Maya Katznelson
