Marc Ash: Art in defiance of the Holocaust
He dares to speak the unspeakable. After Milan, Venice, Toronto, Madrid, New York and Montreal, Marc Ash's confrontational exhibition moves to the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, to ensure we never forget.... Complex and fragile, “Tous Ensemble”, curated by Moonstar, aims to keep our collective memory of the horrors of the Holocaust alive, and goes beyond the atrocity of those times to offer us a message of peace and brotherhood.
Art - an antidote to the horror
At a time when a group of artists undertakes to reinterpret the most odious book ever written by rewriting the text of “Main Kampf”, “Tous Ensemble” strives in its own right to fight against barbarianism, in the belief that future generations can and must be educated by passing through a communion with history. With the words NOUS TOUS erected before us, we are struck with force: we (humanity) were in this together, and we should never let it happen again. In fact, when the witnesses are no longer here to remind us, it is the role of art to keep our memory alive. “Art is the only substitute for an experience which we have not lived” declares Primo Levi, which is why Marc Ash dares to say the unspeakable, forcing us to confront the worst atrocities mankind has ever committed.
Advocacy against intolerance
They speak volumes - the rags of uniforms hung on barbed wire, the outrage and horror of such symbols as the coloured triangles used to classify the prisoners, the arresting sculptures such as “Les Regards”, showing looks from glazed eyes behind bars, fixed in incomprehension at the horror and absurdity of it all - these works of art by Marc Ash are undeniably a lesson in history. Already more than half a million students have filed through the halls of the Florida Holocaust Museum, and as many will hopefully follow on this necessary journey of discovery and memory. This is an international exhibition of an amplitude rarely achieved with such a delicate subject. Not to be missed.
NB: VIP welcome for the readers of Luxe-magazine.com.
Janvier 2009
