Remember can't forget / Work cycle / Point 4 / Ashes of sorrow
The area of Old Sajmište in Belgrade is a place of many memories.
In 1937-1938, this was the site of the Belgrade Fair, where pavilions were built and cultural and commercial life took place. The first Belgrade Fair opened on September 11, 1937. And already on December 8, 1941, the Jews of Belgrade were sent to the fairgrounds, which were transformed by the German military administration into the Jewish camp Zemun (Judenlager Semlin). By December 12, there were already more than 5,000 prisoners in the camp.
In the Belgrade archives, there are 4 letters from nurse Hilda Deich, who voluntarily went to the camp to work in the camp hospital and help people. And like a large number of prisoners, she died there.
After the Second World War, the area of the fair was used to build barracks for the builders of New Belgrade (a district of the city located between Stari Sajmište and Zemun). People still live there. The Italian pavilion was given over to the workshops of the Serbian Union of Artists (there are still workshops there).
In July 2022, the reconstruction of the central tower of the fair began, which currently houses the Zemun Holocaust Museum. Next in line is the former Italian pavilion.
Once I get to this place, I can’t stop thinking about it and I come there again and again. The layers of historical traumatic context, the everyday life of the people for whom this is home, the gradual restoration of the memorial function, all this creates a very multifaceted pattern of the territory. The simultaneous presence of memory and, at the same time, the flow of ordinary life in the present against the background of this memoriality, outlines the issue of the visibility of memory and the history of the place.
Near the Spasichev Pavilion there are concrete cubes that limit the parking lot. Whole cubes gradually turn into destroyed and broken ones, into fragments. I continue this series with a transparent cube filled with ash. Ashes gradually fill the head, just as grief can gradually absorb a person. The work symbolizes the ancient Jewish custom of sprinkling ashes or earth on the head, mourning misfortune, their own or that of their loved ones. You can drown in grief with your head, go completely into ashes and cease to exist. But will anyone notice it? It may happen that it will remain only a background for the everyday life of those around you.
I observe the life around me. A car drives up and parks 20 cm from the work. A man gets out and asks what I am photographing, asks what it means. After answering, he passes by. A cat walks along the pavilion porch, and cars continue to drive by. A very drunk man approaches and asks if I am a tourist. He does not notice that I am filming. He asks for money and moves on. Life goes on as usual.