Museo Judío de Buenos Aires, "Bobe" 21-12-2023

"Bobe” by the artist Marcela Hoffer, pays tribute to “Bobe” Rushke Honig de Hoffer, Marcela's paternal grandmother (in Yiddish, “Bobe”), a woman who fled Warsaw between the World Wars and arrived in Buenos Aires at the age of 26, never to return to Warsaw again.  

Through this work, Ms. Hoffer makes a tribute to all women who have been persecuted or forced to migrate, women who go into exile, cross worlds and, through reconstituted stories, compose new lives. These are powerful and resilient women who are an inspiration and a beacon for future generations.

In this exhibit, Ms. Hoffer uses collage as a metaphor for the shards and fragments of a shattered life pasted together in a new surrounding, amidst a new culture and people.  These collages heal the wounds of displacement and exile, by integrating the pain with the hope of planting roots in distant lands and nesting new stories.

The works reflect Bobe Rushke in different stages, illustrating a complex and emotional journey from the Warsaw Ghetto of the mid-1940’s to the bustling and secular city of Buenos Aires of subsequent years.  The work allows Bobe Rushke to recover her voice and break the suffocating silence of exile and, once in Buenos Aires, to reconstruct herself.  With these works, Bobe Rushke defies chronological time and enters a cyclical and poetic time and space which brings smiles, and healing. 

The exhibition includes four additional works by the Ajat Collective, a collaboration of Marcela Hoffer and Martina Charaf, as well as six collages by Ms. Charaf that were originally published as illustrations in their book,  Panska 28.