TORONTO.- The Royal Ontario Museum presents Genizot: Repositories of Memory in conjunction with Holocaust Education Week. Created by internationally renowned author and artist Bernice Eisenstein, HEW’s Artist-in-Residence, the installation is displayed in the Samuel European Galleries on the ROM’s Level 3 from October 18, 2014 to February 8, 2015.

The word geniza comes from the Hebrew root g-n-z, originally meant “to hide” or “to put away.” A space for repository, what is placed and accumulated there is also an archive—one of memory and of time that has passed. It is collected memory, collective memory. Traditionally, genizot were temporary spaces for storing worn-out Hebrew language books and papers of religious content and topics as it is forbidden to discard writings containing the name of G-d, inclusive even of letters and legal contracts invoking his name. Genizot were commonly found in the attics of synagogues, but also located within walls or underground. The contents were periodically gathered and then buried in a cemetery, so that their gradual disintegration was a natural progression.

This site-specific installation takes the idea of the geniza—as a place of preservation, of what is hidden away and found, and thus preserved and protected—and looks through it as a prism for considering and exploring the many ways in which memory works and where it is placed.

Eisenstein’s paintings, gouache and charcoal on paper, as well as the objects found or created by the artist, resonate with multiple meanings as they challenge us to consider our own repositories of memory. The objects relate to the theme of memory, what is hidden and found, kept and stored. From official German documents of Eisenstein’s mother to a tie clip belonging to her father to an almond from a tree in Prague, they are all touchstones and companions to the artist’s paintings.

Exhibition-goers are encouraged to also visit the Dr. Fred and Joy Cherry Weinberg Judaica Collection, located nearby in the Samuel European Galleries.

Genizot: Repositories of Memory is free with general Museum admission.

Toronto artist Bernice Eisenstein is the author of the internationally acclaimed graphic memoir I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors, the winner of the Jewish Book Award for Memoir (2007). The publication was adapted into a National Film Board animated short film which was voted among Canada’s Top Ten Short films of 2010 by the Toronto International Film Festival. Her latest work, Correspondences (2013), was created with celebrated novelist and poet Anne Michaels. Bernice Eisenstein’s art has appeared in exhibitions throughout Canada, Europe, and the United States.