I N T E R N AT I O N A L PHOTOGRAPHY F E S T I VA L F O R M AT F E S T I VA L . C O M
1 5 M A R C H 6 M AY
THE BLUE SKIES PROJECT P R O D U C E D & C U R AT E D B Y MONICA ALLENDE
ARTISTS ANTON KUSTERS, RUBEN SAMAMA A N T O N K U S T E R S B E G A N T H E B L U E S K I E S P R O J E C T I N R E S P O N S E T O T H E D E AT H O F H I S G R A N D F AT H E R A N D A M Y S T E R I O U S S T O R Y O F H I S E X P E R I E N C E D U R I N G W O R L D W A R I I .
LIVING IN A SMALL VILLAGE IN OCCUPIED BELGIUM IN 1943, HE ESCAPED ARREST BY THE S S A N D P O S S I B L E D E T E N T I O N I N A G E R M A N C O N C E N T R A T I O N C A M P.
Kusters’ grandfather was not Jewish, but in thinking about what might have happened, Kusters spent the next five years researching and travelling to all known camps run by Nazi Germany. Documenting the Holocaust has provided many artists with moral and aesthetic difficulties. How to capture the enormity of such an extreme and incomprehensible act is beyond immediate representation. Kusters turned his camera away and photographed the blue sky above each of the camp locations he found, forcing the viewer to see that there is nothing to see. The result is a collection of 1078 Polaroid prints, blind-stamped with identification numbers and GPS co-ordinates, representing the paradox of the sky as a witness to the atrocities that happened beneath it. The photographs are an exploration of an already fading memory and sit between the fragments of evidence and the abstracted trace in a space opened for reflection.
The Blue Skies Project is accompanied by a 13-year real-time tracking audio piece created by Ruben Samama.
ORGANISED BY
P R I N T PA R T N E R
SUPPORTED BY DERBY MUSEUMS
SUPPORTED BY
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PICKFORD’S HOUSE