Memories of Fear: The Artwork of Gerda Cohen
A pop-up exhibition exploring memory, trauma, and identity through the multidisciplinary work of Gerda Cohen.
Gerda Cohen was a child refugee from Nazism born in Vienna to Polish-Jewish parents in 1925. Her father was imprisoned at Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen, which had a marked impact on her relationship with him and her own sense of identity. Over the course of her life, Gerda produced hundreds of pieces of art in several forms including paintings, sketches, and sculptures as well as more experimental art installations and poetry. She eventually settled in the Southampton area with her husband, Leslie, and worked as a secondary school art teacher for several decades.
The work included in this exhibition is held in the University of Southampton’s Special Collections and highlights the variety of forms and mediums Gerda experimented with over the years. Much of Gerda’s work is reflective in nature, many of them abstract depictions of the trauma she experienced as a child refugee from Nazism, the inherited trauma from her father as a survivor of Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen, and the grief she experienced from the loss of the majority of her family members, many of whom perished in Auschwitz. Some pieces in the collection are more apparently linked to the Holocaust, with depictions of what seem to be gas chambers and crowds of faceless figures with bald heads, while others lean more on abstract expressionism to convey emotions.
There are also some pieces that explore themes of motherhood, whether that be the relationship between Gerda and her mother or navigating motherhood herself, as well as changing family dynamics and the implications of trauma on the family unit. Gerda’s art takes inspiration from these art styles and trends of twentieth- century Europe and is also reflective of some Holocaust survivor artwork, but her focus appears to be less on the technical aspects of art, rather placing the deeply personal and emotive aspects at the forefront of her works which comes across through her use of colour and subjects. This programme is supported by a grant from The Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR)
