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

Abstract

This paper presents how visual contemporary art can form intertextual relations to the architecture of the Holocaust. For that purpose, two works are used as examples and analyzed in more detail: Lego. Concentration Camp by Zbigniew Libera (1996) and Diamond Dust by Zoran Dimovski (2021). This paper shows how these artists cite architecture of the Holocaust by scale-modelling and additional elements that give their works complex semantic layers. This paper also includes discussion about invisibility and visibility of concentration and extermination camps, as well as the segment that explains the difference between the use of architectural scale models by the Third Reich propaganda and by contemporary artists. This paper concludes how, when cited in works of contemporary art, architecture becomes a complex sign 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, but also to criticize the alarming phenomena of today’s era.