Contemporary Jewish life in Poland through the prism of art

This year Judisk Krönika had the opportunity to cooperate with KulturDocs, which explores the contemporary Jewish reality in Krakow through the work of Polish Jewish artists. Learn more about their work in this Q/A with artist and film maker Michael Rubenfeld.

Firstly, what is the idea behind KulturDocs and how did it emerge?

The idea was to investigate Krakow’s contemporary Jewish reality through the prism of Polish Jewish artists. It emerged because through our work in FestivALT, the Jewish Arts and Activist organization that Magda Rubenfeld and I co-direct, we’ve become aware of how fascinatingly complex and unique the exploration of Poland’s Jewish Artists are. Growing up in Canada, I was used to a very certain type of ”Jewish artist”, however in Poland, because of the legacies of the Holocaust and communism, the intersection of art practice and Jewish identity is like nowhere else in the world. As artists are often the reflectors of society, we wanted to capture these reflections in this series to be able to share it with the world.

How did you choose the artists involved in the project? Was it easy to convince them to take part in this initiative?

We wanted to focus on artists from different generations, because the narrative and identity explorations are radically different depending on people’s age and proximity to the war and communist era. Many Jews in Poland were not born knowing they had Jewish roots, and we wanted to explore that. At the same time, in the third film, Marcella is the only one of the 4 artists who grew up knowing they were Jewish, and we were interested in sharing the difference in how she speaks about the intersection of Jewishness and her art practice and how it differs from the other three. And also we were interested in speaking to artists who had unique narratives or artistic practices, which I hope we’ve been able to convey.

You once said that through this project, you wanted to learn more about Polish-Jewish artists living and working in contemporary Poland. So what did you learn about it? And were these lessons different depending on each episode’s guests?

I wouldn’t necessarily say that I learned ”lessons” per se, but rather I was very struck by how access to Jewish community informed everyone’s Jewish identity politic. Mikołaj Traska, who discovered his Jewishness during Communism at a time and in a place where to be Jewish was very unpopular, seemed to struggle more with understanding what it meant to be a Jew, whereas Anna (Betty Q) was able to access a welcoming community, which gave her a feeling of belonging that helped her embrace her Jewish identity. So it really made me think about the importance of community when trying to embrace a certain identity — something I think I took a lot for granted growing up in Canada. Here in Poland, where there is a deficit of Jews and thus Jewish community (and with such a complicated history) community holds an essentiality that I haven’t experienced before.

What are your hopes or aspirations regarding the project’s reception? Are they any different for Polish and foreign audiences?

I have personally found a lot of inspiration from the Jewish artists in Poland, who are working in ways that have changed my perception of the Polish Jewish contemporary reality. I hope that it illuminates just how complex and fascinatingly unique this moment in Polish Jewish history is. I would say that for foreign audiences, the fact that there are such impressive Jewish artists making work in Poland might come as a surprise. I think many don’t even realize how robust the Jewish contemporary is in Poland, as they maintain beliefs that Poland is an antisemitic place, or that there are not many Jews. The truth is much more complex than this. For Polish audiences, there are no shortages of exposure to Jewish culture, but it is often rooted in nostalgia based events. I hope the series gives Polish audiences a deeper understanding of the Jews of Poland, and insight into the complexity of this reality which can often be clouded by stereotypes or overwhelmed by Holocaust education.

Did working on this project change something in you personally or somehow influence your artistic perspective?

Working on this project helped me make more sense of why exactly I made the decision to relocate to Poland from Canada. There is, for me, an essentiality to the kind of investigations that Jewish artists are exploring in Poland that has helped me re-consider my own relationships to Poland and my own Jewishness — and I hope that learning more about these artists and the art they are making will may do the same for others.

Aleksandra Kumala

Image above: Musician Mikołaj Traska in conversation with film maker Michael Rubenfeld.