Things That Are Lost: MA research, RCA

a hand-made book that binds the work of 6 months following the research question:
’Through examination of the historical documentation of the Warsaw Ghetto, how can illustration contribute to the visual perception of the Holocaust by re-creating lost information, memory, and space?’

My research has been focused on the re-creation of historical visual memory that was lost during the Holocaust in WW2. I was focused on the bunkers which were built in the Warsaw ghetto during 1943. 
These bunkers were built under unbelievable circumstances of deprivation and fear. The people who built them used incredible creative engineering solutions, believing those spaces might save them from the unavoidable end in the death camp of Treblinka.
The Israeli narrative tends to push those stories aside in the historical narration of the Warsaw ghetto, though the people who were hiding there displayed a form of resistance and bravery, as a population under traumatic circumstances.  
I have searched through various archives for Holocaust survivors’ testimonies to find information about those spaces. Each testimony I found includes different information I can use visually in my process. Therefore, my textual research aims to find visual traces.
In my illustration practice, I have tried to reform and recreate those places of bunkers that have been lost [both physically and historically] using illustration, sound, and AI, to give a chance to those creative spaces, people, information and stories to be told once again. 
I bound my research together through a research book that holds my archival, visual, and academic research. I aimed to create an informative piece that investigates each testimony and information I gathered, in order to reform a fertile ground for continuous visual research. 

The project won The Varley Award
Link to the RCA page