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The Three Sisters

WAR: Light Within/After the Darkness

September 22, 2013 – March 16, 2014
Curated by Christian Bernard Singer

The Holocaust was of such an inconceivable horror and magnitude that the world vowed never to let such a thing happen again. ..Notwithstanding this global resolve, since World War II, genocides have occurred in Bosnia, Cambodia, Laos, Burundi, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Congo and Rwanda.

The Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery presents an exhibition featuring seven contemporary art projects that directly respond to the Holocaust and to other atrocities committed during World War II. Specifically, this exhibition explores the spirit of resistance, survival, hope and beauty through the works of Hélène Brunet Neumann, Chari Cohen, Laura Donefer, Mary McKenzie, Tina Poplawski, Oded and Pamela Ravek, and Claire Weissman Wilks.

Oded and Pamela Ravek

The Miracle of the Three Sisters, 2013 – שלוש אחיות

Image: Livia, Cibi and Magda Meller in Vranov, Czekoslovakia, 1942 (a month prior to being taken to Auschwitz).

Image: Livia, Cibi and Magda Meller in Vranov, Czekoslovakia, 1942 (a month prior to being taken to Auschwitz).

Clear glass, Spectrum ice glass and iridescent cast glass, hot-worked, cut, fused and polished glass. Clear dichroic inclusions.
29.5” x 20” x 22”

“Standing in line for countless hours, bare, bruised feet shuffle slowly. The stench of unwashed bodies hovers like a cloud, though my nose has long grown immune. Shivering with cold, wearing but tattered, thin material, I realize that the line splits… and my mother has just moved into the other column to join my grandfather…”
– Livia Miller, 1942

Show more about The Three Sisters >

Three young sisters were brutally seized from the safety of their home and dropped into the horrors of the extermination camp: Auschwitz-Birkenau. When Livia and Cibi were taken in 1942, Cibi told Livia during transport that: “we will eat stones and we will eat nails, but we will live.” Magda, who had been ill in hospital, was with their aunt and cousins in Humany. She was taken to Auschwitz just before the end of the war where the sisters were reunited. The Nazis stripped the sisters of their identity and their humanity through years of hard labour, illness, torture, and overwhelming loss. But despite the evil and cruelty, the purity of their love for each other remained untainted by the hatred that brought them to the camps. The strength from that love kept them alive, each sister relying on the other to be the reason to live through each day. The three sisters used that bond to create new lives in the new State of Israel. They married, raised children, enjoy grandchildren, and now, the joy of great-grandchildren. Three generations, from three sisters, each embracing that love, each knowing that their very existence represents a defiant victory against the Nazis.

The Three Sisters was created in homage to the sisters’ devotion to and love for each other and honours all survivors of the Holocaust who went on to lead honourable and fruitful lives. It is dedicated to Livia (Meller) Ravek, Magda (Meller) Gutman, and Cibi (Meller) Lang, the Ravek’s cherished and dear mother, mother-in-law, and aunts. It also serves as a memorial to the 6,000,000 Jews murdered by the Nazis (scattered roses with thorns on base) and the 1,500,000 children (12 roses on second tier without thorns). The roughly cast numbers on three sides are the numbers that were tattooed on their arms. The three triangles that make up the Star of David evoke the Jewish diaspora come together in Israel, their spiritual land and home. It is a story told in clear glass – a declaration of hope, made bare and transparent for all to see.

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Christian Bernard Singer welcomes guests and introduces artists at the Opening Reception, offering his thoughts and personal experiences
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35 Strathbury Street Ottawa ON K2G 5P1 Canada
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