Minnesmärken (Memorials)

What role does art play for our collective memory? And how can art function as a bridge between the present and the era that no living person has experienced, but which we must never forget? During the academic year 2022/2023, a total of 1000 students from 7th grade in Malmö and 9th grade in the Skåne region have sketched their own memorials inspired by Malmö Konsthall’s exhibition A Glimpse of Ceija Stojka.

In the spring of 2021, over 140 works by the Roma artist and Holocaust survivor Ceija Stojka (1933–2013) were exhibited at Malmö Konsthall. Due to restrictions related to the pandemic, school classes could not be invited to the exhibition, and in the fall of 2022, the art hall therefore opened an exhibition featuring six works by Stojka, titled A Glimpse of Ceija Stojka. In-depth guided tours and workshops were offered to school classes, and a total of over 1000 students from 44 classes participated during the academic year 2022/2023.

The workshop began with a slideshow featuring various well-known and lesser-known memorials from around the world. The students were encouraged to not only reflect on memorials from a historical and societal perspective but also to consider them as artistic objects. What does the scale, material, placement, accessibility, and initiator of a memorial communicate?

Individually or in groups, the students were to come up with their own memorial, dedicated to something of their own choosing. Some examples included memorials for women who have experienced violence and oppression, school shootings and their victims, environmental destruction and climate change, the Black Lives Matter movement, victims of wars, both in Ukraine and in the students’ own countries or their parents’ countries.

At the art hall, a selection of the works created during the year is now being exhibited.