The exhibition: ‘The Objects of Love by Oliver Sears, which tells the fate of individual lives torn asunder in Nazi-occupied Poland and beyond opened in Dublin Castle’s Bedford Hall on 12 January.
Told through a curated collection of precious family objects, photographs and documents, Dublin-based art dealer Oliver Sears vividly brings to life this extreme edge of European history where his mother Monika and grandmother Kryszia are the beating hearts of an epic and intimate story of love, loss, and survival.
The exhibition was opened by Lenny Abrahamson and will be accompanied by an audio narration and an illustrated booklet.
“These forged wartime identity papers show a passport sized photograph of my grandmother Kryszia with freshly dyed blond hair staring straight ahead. A new and necessary look to heighten her Aryan credentials, along with her acquired, nondescript Polish name and unlikely declared profession of ‘typist’. How to measure the fear and desperation in those eyes, hiding from a regime programmed to turn you, your family and your culture into ash.” (Extract from ‘The Objects of Love’, by Oliver Sears)
Speaking ahead of the exhibition’s opening, Minister with responsibility for the Office of Public Works, Patrick O’Donovan, T.D., said:
“The Holocaust represents an event at the limits, a core event in which a shared European memory is rooted that we in Ireland are part of. But it is only through our own personal engagement with the past that we can understand its legacy and continued relevance to our present and future. This exhibition particularises the experience of one family and offers us a unique opportunity to both relate to and bear witness to the fate of those persecuted by the Nazis.”
The exhibition, a presentation of the Office of Public Works in association with Holocaust Awareness Ireland.
