Pourim

The painting Pourim from 2014, populated by a series of uncomfortably mysterious characters, does not provide the viewer with any concrete clues to place the scene in time, space or context. Weidenbaum based the work on a number of overexposed photos of children who celebrate Purim, a kind of cheerful carnival from the Jewish tradition, just after the Second World War. The post-war tragedy of the moment in relation to the children's mascarade gives the painted an 'uncanny' atmosphere. The artist found the images in old family albums that his father had given him. Fascinated by the handwritten notes and the names he found with some of the images, he started an exhaustive search for the identity of the people in the photos. The desire to get to know his family's past better led him to the Brussels State Archives. Weidenbaum was also able to identify one of the places that appeared several times in the photos as a home in the Walloon Brabant Profondsart that received Jewish orphans after the Second World War. With the series of paintings The Stranger, Weidenbaum presented a visual report on the search for part of his family history.

Text Bjorne Baeten