Yad Vashem penning 1988

Curator: So, here we have the "Yad Vashem penning," made in 1988. It’s currently held at the Rijksmuseum. Editor: Yes, it's a metal relief sculpture, almost like a commemorative coin. I’m immediately drawn to the use of typography. It's a blend of languages – Hebrew and French – creating this sense of international recognition. How do you approach a piece like this? Curator: I look at this object as a product of specific labor and material conditions. Consider the material – metal. Why metal? What processes were used to create the relief? Embossing, perhaps? These choices weren’t arbitrary. They signify durability, permanence, mirroring the enduring impact of the events it commemorates. Editor: That’s interesting. So, beyond just the image and text, you're focusing on the ‘making’ of it. Curator: Exactly. Think about the social context: Yad Vashem is an institution dedicated to remembering the Holocaust. This penning becomes a tangible object, a form of currency, exchanged as gratitude. It implicates a network of producers, distributors, and recipients, each playing a role in maintaining this memory. What does it mean to *produce* memory in this way? Editor: It makes you think about the value we place on certain objects and the labor embedded within them. The very act of creating multiples also feels significant—moving from individual experience to a collective one. Curator: Precisely. This penning isn’t just about remembrance; it’s about the industrialization of memory, a mass-produced acknowledgement meant to circulate and perform labor on its own. Consider its materiality. Cold feature colors for something with supposed "golden fonts" for whom and why? The relief would not be there without the labour process behind it. Editor: This reframes my perspective entirely. I was initially focused on the imagery, but seeing it as a material object deeply connected to social and historical forces adds another layer of complexity. Curator: It invites us to consider how material culture actively shapes our understanding of the past.