Heritage, Tech, and Tradition: Family, History and Split Narratives with Hagar Cygler

Session #2 – Tuesday November 21, 2023
Hagar Cygler – Family, History and Split Narratives
The story of an apartment building in Poland owned by the artist’s family is the departure point for an intimate look into Jewish and Israeli identity and heritage. Starting in 2017 at a residency in POLIN museum in Warsaw, Hagar Cygler explored her personal history through objects and images found in local flea markets, creating an installation and a booklet. This deep dive into her family history continued in 2019 in Lodz and later at the Yiddishland Pavilion in Venice, with materials from the city’s archive regarding the actual building. This journey led to an exhibition and artist’s book with the final part manifested in a handmade book, published earlier this year. In the program we’ll travel with Hagar through her own research and art, placing emphasis on the intersections between personal-national-religious identities, how they translate over time and continents and the unique connections between art and archives. Hagar Cygler is a graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design (BFA, 2006) and the California Institute of the Arts (MFA, 2017).Cygler works in the larger context of archives and collections, focusing on the classification and reorganization of material and information. Her focus is on personal and historical memory, and by connecting photographs with personal and anonymous objects, she explores the act of collecting and its role within the archive as cultural memory.”