The Auschwitz Foundation organized this international conference under the patronage of UNESCO, the Minister-President of the Government of the French Community of Belgium, the Brussels Goethe Institute and a number of international concentration camp committees.

Six subjects were examined during the three days of the conference: “Surviving and Painting”, “Art and Life: Combating Auschwitz”, “Testimony and Heirs”, “Figurations and Figures of Absence”, “Art Faced with the Unportrayable”, “Art as a Memorial Space” and “The Memorial Monument”.

27 participants, artists and art historians, described their practice and the research they apply in the plastic arts to depict or conceptualize the memory of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. The underlying aim was to define and establish the possibilities offered by art for keeping the memory of those events alive and ensuring ongoing discussion of their major implications.

Publication:
Y. Thanassekos, D. Weyssow (eds.), "The memory of Auschwitz in contemporary art" / "La mémoire d'Auschwitz dans l'art contemporain", Bulletin trimestriel de la Fondation Auschwitz, special number 60FR,  July-September 1998.