Citing the Architecture of the Holocaust as a Method of Critique in Contemporary Artistic Practices: Zbigniew Libera, Zoran Dimovski, and the Use of Scale Models
Citing the Architecture of the Holocaust as a Method of Critique in Contemporary Artistic Practices: Zbigniew Libera, Zoran Dimovski, and the Use of Scale Models

Summary/Abstract: This paper presents how visual contemporary art can form intertextual relationsto the architecture of the Holocaust. For that purpose, two works are used as examples andanalyzed in more detail: Lego. Concentration Camp by Zbigniew Libera (1996) and DiamondDust by Zoran Dimovski (2021). This paper shows how these artists cite architecture of theHolocaust by scale-modelling and additional elements that give their works complex semanticlayers. This paper also includes discussion about invisibility and visibility of concentration andextermination camps, as well as the segment that explains the difference between the use ofarchitectural scale models by the Third Reich propaganda and by contemporary artists. Thispaper concludes how, when cited in works of contemporary art, architecture becomes a complexsign shifted from one discourse into another and from one historic period to the present,a phenomenon embraced by artists to criticize the socio-political context of its creation, butalso to criticize the alarming phenomena of today’s era.

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