The project 16432 by Polona Demšar is based on her research of the past of her ancestors who were (like many other inhabitants of Europe at the time) inadvertently subjected to a brutal ideological persecution of different-thinking and redundant people. As always, Polona Demšar draws from a purely personal perspective, which she introduces into her continuous creation through poetically set artistic interpretations. The cause for this exhibition project was the death of the author’s grandmother, one of the last surviving Slovenian internees to the Auschwitz death camp, a year ago. In her work, Polona Demšar intuitively approaches the concept of human transience, i.e. the concepts of death and life, the latter having a very low price in so very extreme situations as is a war. Polona Demšar, being unique in her home area, demonstrates a very special innovativeness in the sense of amalgamating different media such as sculpture, photography and glass usage. The project 16432 problematises the attitude of modern society towards often overlooked war internees and their disappearance. Through a close personal relationship to a person who had survived Auschwitz, the author developed her idea on the basis of existing photographic documentation – the documentation of body parts, particularly arms with serial numbers worn by internees on their left hands. The exhibition project contains fragments and silhouettes of an inter-media sculpture and photographic layout. Due to the contents of the project being personally narrative, the artist supported her concept with the use of sensitive materials and techniques (glass photography and ceramics). The project has been devised as a linkage of these specific fragments of suffering with a wider circle of people, as in the broader plan it envisages a collaboration with the Association of Expellees of Slovenia and the Museum at the Brestanica Castle, where all the deportees were gathered before being transported to various camps.

(Miha Colner)

http://www.polonademsar.si/