Linocut, edition of 4. Printed on Guarro Super Alfa paper, 56 x 38 cm.
Jewish history is characterised by exile, expulsions and emigrations. Often the flight allowed only to take the clothes on body, a small suitcase and the most important religious items. The boat on linocut is inspired by a gravestone on the jewish cemetery in Brody, to which I added Rashi´s synagogue in Worms (Germany) and the Torah scrolls as the expression of religious and cultural identity and history.
The boat drifts in the sea with opposing currents, rendering it directionless. That too, is what some emigrants had to endure. For example the St. Louis, a German ocean liner with more than 900 Jewish refugees escaping from Nazi Germany in 1939 only to be refused by Cuba, the United States and Canada, and forced to return to Europe where many of the refugees later perished in the Holocaust.
I named the boat C.Rackete after the German captain who, in 2019, rescued refugees escaping poverty and various wars in Africa with the ship Sea-Watch 3. Many migrants drowned before after sea unworthy boats sunk. The ship was refused to land in the nearest safe harbour, which was in Italy, by the rightwing Italian interior minister. Captain Claudia Rackete landed without authorisation because of the dire situation for the migrants, was arrested by the Italian authorities, but later released. Without the engagement of people like Claudia many more dead bodies would be floating in the Mediterranean sea. My linocut honours the engagement of Claudia and others to ease the humanitarian crises in the Mediterranean region.
