Client
Location: Skopje, Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of
Completion date: 2012
Project Team
Architect
Jovan Ivanofski
Art Consultant
Ana Ivanofska
Artist
Eddie Jacobs
BJA
Overview
The museum requested that BJA design a unique memorial at the entrance to the museum. Spread around all the walls of the entrance to the museum, the sculpture is composed of layered sheet steel planes, painted and sculpted as people, holding up frames, the majority of which contain images of the victims deported and murdered at the death camp Treblinka.
Goals
The Holocaust Memorial Center for the Jews of Macedonia was erected in the capital city - Skopje in 2012. BJA was the lead exhibition designer and conceptual developer of the entire project. The client asked for a suitable memorial to commemorate the murder of almost the entire Macedonian Jewish community and wanted a memorial at the entrance that would start the visitor experience in a powerful way. The integration was seamless.
Additional Information
Some of the frames are empty, some contain mirrors, other digital screens scrolling more images of victims. While the images of the victims themselves are critical to the composition, it is the hands holding these frames- and the painted images of the people holding them up - that lend particular power to this memorial. It is at once protest, supplication, and command, to remember these victims.