Lara Bongard inherited a 100 year old Shabbat tablecloth, the only surviving heirloom from the vanished world of her ancestors, with which her great-grandfather Mordko Bongard crossed the river of his shtetl in 1911 and never returned. He left his family and community, to escape the pogroms that swept the regions. Lara embarked on an extensive research into the scattered history of her family in the previous Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine). She retraced family members, collected testimonies, photographs, letters and archival material, researched Yiddish tales, symbols and mythologies — in order to reconstruct her own image of the past. The tablecloth grew into a symbol of life: sharing food with family across time, connecting East with West, the generations, and diversity of cultures we as a family represent. Gradually, dislocation became a portable home.
The Girl Who Crossed the River with a Tablecloth is a multidimensional work and dynamic space of memory, in which fictional stories about the lives of her ancestors are written in conjunction with the ancient Hebrew lunar calendar, travel stories and memories, photographs and illustrations. The project contributes to generating new connecting narratives about the fluid meaning of being 'at home' in our contemporary world and reframing perspectives on multiple histories and identity.
The Girl Who Crossed the River with a Tablecloth is presented at the Kunstkabinet of the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam, taking place from 8.04 – 01.10.2023.
17 × 24 cm, 272 p, American dustjacket
ISBN 9789464665178
Design and editing: Lara Bongard & Lien Van Leemput for 6'56"
Language: English
This publication was made possible with the generous support of the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts), LUCA break-out, Stichting Stokroos, Stichting Niemeijer Fonds, Hendrik Mullerfonds, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, Voordekunst crowdfunding platform, and Retian Nopra Holding B.V.
Edition of 750
September 2023
