FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
VEDEM UNDERGROUND EXHIBIT WILL BE HOSTED BY HOLOCAUST MUSEUM HOUSTON
HOUSTON, May 4, 2017 – The Vedem Underground Project is proud to present VEDEM UNDERGROUND at Holocaust Museum Houston starting June 15, 2017. VEDEM UNDERGROUND is a traveling art exhibit that deconstructs and reinterprets the inspiring but little-known story of Vedem, the longest-running underground magazine in a Nazi camp. From 1942 to 1944, Vedem (“In the Lead” in Czech) chronicled life within the walls of Czechoslovakia’s Terezin Ghetto. Borne from a secret society of teenage boys, the weekly publication was a symbol of protest and rebellion by some of the era’s youngest resistance fighters. Los Angeles-based filmmaker Rina Taraseiskey, along with artist Michael Murphy and writer Danny King, created the exhibit to both pay homage to Taraseiskey’s grandfather, a resistance fighter during the Holocaust, and to inspire young adults to pursue artistic activism as a way of embracing their identity and protesting oppression and hate speech.
A tribute to what the Jewish Journal called “the Dead Poets Society of Terezin,” the exhibit made its world premiere at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles in May 2016, and was attended by more than 100,000 people during its three-month showing there.
Using a combination of pop-art graphics, archival photographs and cartoons, and the prose and poetry created by the magazine’s contributors, VEDEM UNDERGROUND celebrates the artistic and cultural legacy of Vedem by breaking down its 83 weekly issues totaling the 800 pages, then reconstructing them in the form of a contemporary magazine.
VEDEM UNDERGROUND was produced and curated by Rina Taraseiskey, whose grandfather led the resistance at Lithuania’s Kovno Ghetto and who is also producing the Vedem Underground documentary film with an Oscar- and Emmy- award winning team; Los Angeles-based art director Michael Murphy, who conceptualized the exhibit as a merging of punk subculture-inspired art and the 1940s-era ‘zine aesthetic; and Los Angeles-based writer and journalist Danny King, who is producing the graphic novel about Vedem.
“It’s been an honor to showcase the incredibly courageous and creative work by some of the youngest resistance fighters of the World War II era,” said Taraseiskey, founder of the Vedem Underground project. “These teenage boys refused to give up their identity, their humanity and their fighting spirit.”
“I was motivated to combine the feel of a 1940s-era ‘zine with something that would be more relatable today, especially to younger people,” said Murphy, the exhibit’s art director. “These boys were rebels, so I took a more contemporary, almost punk-rock approach.”
“These boys were risking their lives in order to do this and they used nicknames to hide their identities,” said King. “Vedem reflected the stark reality of life inside Terezin, but it was also an escape for them. They expressed their opinions with humor, cartoons and poetry. They could forget that they were in prison.”
VEDEM UNDERGROUND was the winner of the 2016 WORD Grant: The Bruce Geller Memorial Prize, a project of American Jewish University’s Institute for Jewish Creativity. The exhibit has also been generously supported by the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles. Other support for the project comes from Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation and The Ziering Foundation.
CONTACT:
Rina Taraseiskey
Founder and Executive Director, Vedem Underground
323.397.6423
www.vedemunderground.com.
ABOUT THE VEDEM UNDERGROUND PROJECT: Vedem Underground is a multimedia project that celebrates the courageous, heartbreaking and ultimately victorious legacy of Vedem (“In the Lead” in Czech), the longest-running underground magazine to be regularly produced by prisoners inside a Nazi concentration camp. The project aims to teach tolerance and encourage artistic activism through Vedem‘s historic, and cultural lessons. The project includes a museum exhibit, a documentary feature film, a graphic novel and a cutting edge educational program. The exhibit premiered in May 2016, the film is slated for release by the end of 2017 and the graphic novel will be completed in early 2018.
ABOUT HOLOCAUST MUSEUM HOUSTON: Holocaust Museum Houston is dedicated to educating people about the Holocaust, remembering the 6 million Jews and other innocent victims and honoring the survivors’ legacy. Using the lessons of the Holocaust and other genocides, the Museum teaches the dangers of hatred, prejudice and apathy and builds a more humane society by promoting responsible individual behavior, cultivating civility and pursuing social justice. Holocaust Museum Houston is one of only 1,056 accredited American Alliance of Museums of the more than 33,000 museums in the nation.