Exhibition ADEL ABDESSEMED «My child»

On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, the Shoah Memorial invites contemporary artist Adel Abdessemed to present, in the crypt, a set of works entitled "My child" : a sculpture, and a series of drawings inspired by the emblematic photograph N° 14 that the S.S Jürgen Stroop, addressed to Krüger and Himmler, documenting the repression of the insurrection in April-May 1943.

Beyond the historicity of photography, the artist brings out, through the materiality of sculpture, its almost living density, its delicacy, the poignant and universal figure of brutally condemned childhood, surrender and terror. Reactivating this image, notably through his drawings that "deconstruct" it, Adel Abdessemed re-questions its meaning, controversial, but also and above all pays tribute to this child, offering him, he says, "the immortality of the work of art."

French artist of Berber origin, Adel Abdessemed graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Batna (1990) and Algiers (1994) as well as from the National School of Fine Arts of Lyon (1998).
Since his first solo exhibition in 2001, others have been dedicated to him: MoMA P.S.1. , New York; San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Parasol Unit, London; Mathaf: Museum of Modern Art, Doha; Centro de Arte Ged, Malaga; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Montreal and Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon; RockBund Art Museum, Shanghai.

The artist was the subject of a major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, Paris in 2012. It is also represented in numerous international collections: Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Geneva; Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris; Pinault Collection Palazzo Grassi–Punta Della Dogana, Venice; Moderna Museet, Stockholm and the Black Gold Museum, Riyadh.

Photo credit: ADEL ABDESSEMED
My Child, 2014, Recycled ivory, 133 x 70 x 40 cm
© Adel Abdessemed, Paris ADAGP 2022. Photography: Elad Sarig