Yevgeniy Fiks
Yonia Fain’s Map of Refugee Modernism
Yonia Fain’s Map of Refugee Modernism is an audio walk through the territory of the Venice Biennale (Giardini and Arsenale) that narrates the story of migrations, escapes, and creativity of the 20th century artist and Yiddish poet Yonia Fain (1913-2013).
A Ukrainian Jew by birth, Fain was brought by the events of the 20th century from his native Ukraine to Lithuania, Poland, Soviet Union, Japan, China, Mexico, and eventually to the United States. Yonia Fain’s story is quite typical: in the 20th century, the unfolding careers of many Eastern European, and particularly Jewish artists, were cut short as a result of the WW2 and the Holocaust and many of them by 1950s found themselves as refugees in North America, Israel and elsewhere after the War.
Yonia Fain’s Map of Refugee Modernism accounts for the immigrant, uprooted, displaced, and resettled Jewish artists, originally from Eastern Europe and focuses on artists who had been forgotten, neglected, or ignored by national art histories of their countries of origin (Poland, Ukraine, etc.) and of their newly adopted homes (US, etc.) The project superposes the story of Yonia Fain’s migrations, escapes, and artistic transformations on the map of the Venice Biennale 2022 thus creating a spatial map of Yonia Fain’s personal Yiddishland which manifest itself as an imaginary country through his poetry and art. The audio walk connects Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Polish, Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, and American national pavilions – following Yonia Fain’s journey.
A Ukrainian Jew by birth, Fain was brought by the events of the 20th century from his native Ukraine to Lithuania, Poland, Soviet Union, Japan, China, Mexico, and eventually to the United States. Yonia Fain’s story is quite typical: in the 20th century, the unfolding careers of many Eastern European, and particularly Jewish artists, were cut short as a result of the WW2 and the Holocaust and many of them by 1950s found themselves as refugees in North America, Israel and elsewhere after the War.
Yonia Fain’s Map of Refugee Modernism accounts for the immigrant, uprooted, displaced, and resettled Jewish artists, originally from Eastern Europe and focuses on artists who had been forgotten, neglected, or ignored by national art histories of their countries of origin (Poland, Ukraine, etc.) and of their newly adopted homes (US, etc.) The project superposes the story of Yonia Fain’s migrations, escapes, and artistic transformations on the map of the Venice Biennale 2022 thus creating a spatial map of Yonia Fain’s personal Yiddishland which manifest itself as an imaginary country through his poetry and art. The audio walk connects Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Polish, Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, and American national pavilions – following Yonia Fain’s journey.
Yonia Fain’s Map of Refugee Modernism is a critical intervention into the global art history and reflection upon the process of shaping national art historical and contemporary narratives. Yonia Fain, just like many other refugee and immigrant artists both in the 20th century and today do not easily fit the national art histories of the countries they were displaced from. Some of these artists immigrated or fled at a too young of an age to make an undisputed mark on the local/national art scenes of their home countries. Some of them left as accomplished artists and found it difficult to assimilate into the competitive and hostile local/national art scenes of their newly adopted countries. Some artists have been misattributed and misidentified and their national belonging has been questioned/disputed either because of the shifting national borders, changing political ideologies or because of their national, religious, ethnic, or racial identity. Some artists easily fit the Western art canons but most of them remain uninvited, uncollected, and unclaimed. By creating Yonia Fain’s Map of Refugee Modernism we want to claim artistic and historical justice for artists from the geographical and mental borderlands, from ethnic immigrant ghettos of Western metropolises, from the blind spots of art historical canons.
The audio walk is available here on yiddishlandpavilion.art and each visitor with a phone, Internet access and headphones is able to follow the route and listen to all the stops of Yonia Fain's life and artistic journey.
To experience the audio walk on their own, visitors are invited to make stops inside or outside of each of these national pavilions (Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Polish, Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, and American) and play a sound file that corresponds to each of the pavilion/country. The narration will describe Yonia Fain’s personal story of survival, hope, which will work as the backdrop of the artistic and political agenda of the time when he lived in each of the eight countries.
To experience the audio walk on their own, visitors are invited to make stops inside or outside of each of these national pavilions (Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Polish, Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, and American) and play a sound file that corresponds to each of the pavilion/country. The narration will describe Yonia Fain’s personal story of survival, hope, which will work as the backdrop of the artistic and political agenda of the time when he lived in each of the eight countries.
Voice: Shane Baker
Sound Design: Boris Krichevsky
Special thanks to:
The League for Yiddish, Inc https://leagueforyiddish.org/
Joshua Waletzky and Sheva Zucker “Yonia Fain: With Pen and Paintbrush”https://leagueforyiddish.org/yoni.html
The audiowalk is created with generous support of The James Gallery
The Graduate Center, CUNY
Sound Design: Boris Krichevsky
Special thanks to:
The League for Yiddish, Inc https://leagueforyiddish.org/
Joshua Waletzky and Sheva Zucker “Yonia Fain: With Pen and Paintbrush”https://leagueforyiddish.org/yoni.html
The audiowalk is created with generous support of The James Gallery
The Graduate Center, CUNY
Yonia Fain, "Witness to History," markers and pastel on paper, 2000s
Courtesy: Congress for Jewish Culture
Courtesy: Congress for Jewish Culture
More about Yonia Fain:
Born in Ukraine in 1913, Yonia Fain as a young child fled to Vilnius (then Poland) with his family where he received his education and began producing art and Yiddish poetry. At the time of the Nazi invasion of Poland, Yonia was living in Warsaw and escaped making it to Vladivostok, Soviet Union. Then, obtaining falsified documents and transit visas signed by Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, Fain escaped through Siberia to Japan and spent the remainder of World War II in Shanghai, China, where he continued to make paintings and write Yiddish poetry.
As the war ended, Fain moved to Mexico where his art was championed by Diego Rivera, who curated exhibitions of Fain’s work and wrote catalog essays as well. During those years 1947-1953, Yonia was commissioned to do a number of major murals such as the 1949 wall mural and ceiling dome painting for the Memorial Chapel, Panteon Israelita, Cementerio Ashkenazi, in Mexico City. He also represented Mexico in the 1952 Carnegie International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting in Pittsburgh. In 1953, Fain moved to New York and had numerous exhibitions there. He continued to be a prolific poet of Yiddish poetry, serving as the President of the Yiddish Pen Society, winning many awards, and authoring five books including Nyu-Yorker adresn: Dertseylungen in 1995, and Der Finftersman: lider (The Fifth Season Poems) in 2007.
While Fain’s pre-WW2 works didn’t survive, his post-War works and poetry are deeply connected to modernist concerns and the themes of brutality, survival, hope, atrocities, despair, refuge, migration, and humanism.
Born in Ukraine in 1913, Yonia Fain as a young child fled to Vilnius (then Poland) with his family where he received his education and began producing art and Yiddish poetry. At the time of the Nazi invasion of Poland, Yonia was living in Warsaw and escaped making it to Vladivostok, Soviet Union. Then, obtaining falsified documents and transit visas signed by Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, Fain escaped through Siberia to Japan and spent the remainder of World War II in Shanghai, China, where he continued to make paintings and write Yiddish poetry.
As the war ended, Fain moved to Mexico where his art was championed by Diego Rivera, who curated exhibitions of Fain’s work and wrote catalog essays as well. During those years 1947-1953, Yonia was commissioned to do a number of major murals such as the 1949 wall mural and ceiling dome painting for the Memorial Chapel, Panteon Israelita, Cementerio Ashkenazi, in Mexico City. He also represented Mexico in the 1952 Carnegie International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting in Pittsburgh. In 1953, Fain moved to New York and had numerous exhibitions there. He continued to be a prolific poet of Yiddish poetry, serving as the President of the Yiddish Pen Society, winning many awards, and authoring five books including Nyu-Yorker adresn: Dertseylungen in 1995, and Der Finftersman: lider (The Fifth Season Poems) in 2007.
While Fain’s pre-WW2 works didn’t survive, his post-War works and poetry are deeply connected to modernist concerns and the themes of brutality, survival, hope, atrocities, despair, refuge, migration, and humanism.