Zbigniew Libera
I met the artist (currently of infamous record at the Jewish Museum in New York) Zbigniew Libera in Warsaw in 1997. I purposely sought him out at the time to write an article about his piece, Lego Concentration Camp. The controversy over his work at the new exhibition called <a href="http://www.jewishmuseum.org/Pages/Exhibitions/Special_Exhibits/mirroring_evil/mirror_intro.html" target="_top"Mirroring Evil is coming at the right time in our own cultural history, now that we are removed from the innocence of rediscovering the evility of the Holocaust.
In 1997 when we met, Zbigniew could see the ways and means in which the Holocaust was being utilized by Hollywood and many others to generate business, to refine target audiences, to provide test-beds for new products. “The Holocaust,” as a cultural commodity, has largely been let go now, thanks to the new focus on terrorism, a real and actual threat to our lives. The Holocaust, on the other hand, is now able to inform everything we do and think in this new era of chilling uncertainty, faith, and dogged perseverence in the face of evil. In the coming weeks, MANOVERBOARD.com will showcase the work of Maciej Toporowicz, another artist in Mirroring Evil.
Please “stay tuned.”