After opening on 9 March at the House of Nijmegen History in Nijmegen (The Netherlands), the international exhibition Art of Remembrance continues its journey in Turin (Italy), where it will open to the public on Saturday, 18 April at the Polo del ’900.
The exhibition is part of a wider European cooperation project co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme, in which the LRE Foundation is a key partner among others. It brings together contemporary artistic practices developed through residencies at World War II remembrance sites across Europe.
Free to visit, the exhibition will remain open until 7 May.
On display are works by Rebekka Bauer, Raphaël Dallaporta, Juhana Moisander and Gail Ritchie. Each artist developed their project during a residency hosted by a different European site of memory: the former partisan stronghold of Paraloup in Italy, the Bastogne War Museum, the Sybir Memorial Museum and La Coupole WWII Museum.
In Art of Remembrance, memory is approached as something unstable and continuously reshaped rather than fixed in time. The works highlight perspectives that often remain at the margins, from women’s roles in resistance and survival and intergenerational remembrance, as well as the presence of non-human witnesses such as animals and landscapes. Attention is also given to how trauma is gradually absorbed by bodies and environments, lingering beyond the historical moment.
These reflections take form through a wide range of artistic media, including glass installations, sculptural and organic materials, photography, film, and immersive sound. Each work is rooted in an in-depth process of research and exchange, developed through the artists’ engagement with archives, historians, and local communities during their residencies, allowing the specific context of each site to shape both method and outcome.
Rather than presenting direct representations of wartime events, the exhibition unfolds through suggestion, metaphor, and material presence, encouraging a slow, attentive and emotional encounter with the past.
While the exhibition in Nijmegen engaged with a city deeply shaped by wartime devastation and reconstruction, the Turin chapter situates the exhibition within a major cultural hub dedicated to the history and legacies of the twentieth century, creating a new dialogue between European memory and local context.
The exhibition will be inaugurated on Saturday, 18 April at 18:00 in the Salotto del Polo. Speakers will include the exhibition’s curator Isabelle Benoit; artist Rebekka Bauer, who undertook her residency in Paraloup; historian Mirco Carrattieri, coordinator of the LRE Italy Historical Advisory Board; Alessandro Rubini, director of the Polo del ’900; Beatrice Verri, of the Nuto Revelli Foundation; and Paola Boccalatte of the Paesaggi della Memoria Scientific Committee.
Also present will be Aldo Rolfi, son of Lidia Beccaria Rolfi, a member of the Italian Resistance who was later deported to Ravensbrück and became an important voice in Holocaust testimony. Rolfi’s life and legacy are at the centre of Rebekka Bauer’s installation.
Alongside the exhibition, a public programme of workshops, guided tours and educational activities will run throughout its opening period, offering visitors opportunities to engage more deeply with the artistic processes and the broader questions around how memory is shaped and transmitted today.
The project is co-funded by the European Union under the Creative Europe programme. Partners include Tempora, the LRE Foundation, La Coupole Centre d’Histoire, Fondazione Nuto Revelli, the City of Bastogne and the Sybir Memorial Museum, in collaboration with the Polo del ’900 Foundation.
