My latest ceramic installation is a deeply personal exploration of the Jewish death trains in Romania, represented through a symbolic mass grave. The cracked base of the piece reflects the fractured nature of life and memory, showing the destruction caused by these historical atrocities. Each clay figure within the grave is unique, torn open to reveal something inside—whether a heart, a wound, or a fetus—symbolizing the variety of people on the trains and the tragic ways in which they died. When I made the female figure with the unborn baby, it hurt me unspeakably. To realise that some mothers not only lost their own lives, but lost a life within them really struk me. Some of the figures have scratches, capturing the pain and struggle they endured. Through this work, I aim to give each figure a story, honoring their individuality while acknowledging the collective loss. None of the victims have their own tombstone, none of them have a place of remembrance just for them, that's why I wanted to emphasise the individuality in my work. The clay medium allowed me to express the weight of this history, and it’s my way of ensuring these stories are not forgotten.

My artwork is a short film about the death trains, a terrible event I learned about in Iași. The film shows a series of clips that start with people living their everyday lives. Then, it quickly changes to show them being transported in the trains, which shows how fast everything happend.

I wanted to show how those people felt while inside the wagons struggling to breathe, scared, and not knowing what would happen next. The film ends on a lighter note by showing a beautiful view of Târgu Frumos and the cemetery where they now rest in peace, which represents calm and remembrance.

This project was a team effort. Many volunteers helped me write the story and record different audio clips. I also asked students from various workshops to help me with this personal artwork. Together, we aimed to share the stories of the past and highlight the importance of remembering such events. It is vital that we never remain silent about such things happening today.

For the JEMOM museum, I made two installations. The first one is based on interactivity: I calculated the density of people in the Death train and traced a square meter on the ground. More than a hundred and twenty people were packed in less than forty square meters, which represented 3 to 4 people/m2. I invited the visitors of the exhibition to step into the square and to imagine how it would feel to stand up this close to each other, with no light, no air, no food nor water, no bathroom and extreme heat for 16 hours, 2 days, a week. On the ground I disposed candles to remember the lives taken away in these atrocious conditions. 

The title of the second artwork is Zakhor, which means “Remember” in Hebrew. It is a land art project that intends to offer repair and healing to the memory of the common grave in Târgu Frumos. In the Jewish tradition, instead of flowers, one leaves a rock on the tombs of their loved ones. However, with no names nor individual space to rest, the 654 bodies buried in the Jewish cemetery cannot be properly remembered. To honor each one of them, I collected 654 stones in the Moldova river, with the immense help of Mihaela and Călin who accompanied me to Roman. I asked the students of the high school we intervened in Iaşi to write a message of love and respect on some of the stones (one for each of the 14 groups of teenagers) because I wanted this to be a collective action, for the memory to be shared. I then carried the rocks to the cemetery and drew a spiral with them, because for me it’s the symbol of the proximity and porosity between the past, present and future. Starting from the inside of the circle, we grow and expand only by embracing what came before. As a rock in a pond, the spiral also represents a shock wave and the idea of connectivity and the spreading of feelings and information within the intertwined human community. Through Zakhor I hope to spread love and peace, the best weapons against horror and violence, with the will that remembering the victims of a genocide of the past would help stop the ongoing massacres. 

For my personal artwork, I wanted to create something purely beautiful, despite the heaviness of the topic. The idea came to me when we were visiting the Jewish Cemetery in Tărgu Frumos and were thinking about how we could bring peace to the souls of the dead, set them free, and the thought of making lanterns came to me naturally.

I felt like I had a good idea, but when the time for executing it came, I found myself a bit lost.  I struggled with finding what pattern I should cut out, everything I drew felt somehow wrong, but I couldn’t quite catch what. What helped me overcome this feeling was talking to my fellow volunteers about it and taking their advice. I needed to step back from what I was doing and really think about what emotion I wanted to convey through my lanterns. I came to a conclusion similar to my original idea: I want my lanterns to radiate warmth, freedom, peace, hope and serenity. This meant I had to scrap every drawing I’ve made so far and create new designs, which was quite challenging for me since I was short on time and I wanted to have at least 3 lanterns ready by our first exhibition. At the same time, I didn’t want to rush the process, so I decided to focus on quality over quantity. 

My artwork is a live role play performance. I embody a Jewish man who lost his brother during the Iași Pogrom and is struggling with madness.

The story: Iacob Daniel Harsh is a man who became mad because he asked people in the street every day about his brother Arik and acted to people about what happened to him in 1941...

In 1941, Iacob Daniel Harsh and his brother Arik Daniel Harsh were two of thousands of Jews who were forced into crowded cattle cars. These cattle cars were sealed shut, with no ventilation, food, or water for the deportees. The conditions inside were horrific, leading to many deaths from suffocation, heatstroke, and dehydration. When the train stopped in Târgu Frumos, 640 dead people were placed in a mass grave, and Arik passed away on the train and his the last moments of his life, he hugged his brother after his death the train stopped at Târgu Frumos and soldiers forced Iacob to bury his brother or he would die too, he did it and survived from war but he not survive of mad because, after many years of war, he was asking people about his brother every day.

Jemom museum is the most challenging because of the horrific topic. At first, I was struggling and lost my motivation, nothing came to my mind. When we visited the cemetery all I could think about was “Humans don’t deserve to be killed”. Then I realized I wanted to represent humanity and to show others that we all are the same inside. Eventually we all are humans; this is the main idea of my artwork. My installation is about a human who consists of a simple body made out of red, black and white threads. Bland and white is the soul and red is the body. The human is splitted into two parts and inside there’s only red – body. We are the same from inside, and nobody deserves to be killed. 

The artwork I make for the Jemom museum is related to the Death Train that happened during the Progrom in Targu Frumos. I wanted to make people realize the feeling of this event, and show them the emotions and the suffering throughout this. To make this happen I searched a way to include the public to this artwork. I wanted them to interact with it. 

So this artwork is an interactive project, in which we can see a rectangle, that symbolizes a wagon, with inside of it, a bunch of different crowded people, with expressions and postures of suffering. We have the possibility to interact with the mouse, by clicking on the characters, if we click on one of them, it disapears. I wanted to make people think that they could make them all disapear, but in fact, when we click on one that disapears, another one appears randomly, so the people are inside forever. It represents their death and how they could not escape it.

For my artwork for this museum, I wrote and performed a song titled 'Heavy Hearts.'  I tried Through it, to convey the emotions of the victims of massacres and wars by describing what their lives were like before the tragedy that befell them, taking away their lives, dreams, and everything. It is a challenge for me to recall the suffering of a people we witness in the  present what they experienced in the past, wars, massacres, forced displacement, the devaluation of human life, and its reduction to mere numbers. It's disappointing that what  was supposed to be a dark spot in human history  and a lesson for the future, unfortunately, continues  in the present, representing a cycle of violence that has not been broken.

In addition, my method of engaging and interacting with the audience involved having them perform karaoke to my song. This created an atmosphere of interaction, enthusiasm, and intimacy, and helped solidify the song's intended message in people's minds. Performing the song also evokes empathy and internal emotions in the participants, which was the goal, alongside ensuring they are actively engaged, of course.

And I performed a cover of the song 'I Won't Light a Candle Yet for You' from the Schindler's List movie soundtrack, combining both the English version and the Romanian version, 'Neuitare' by Paula Seling. Naturally, it was challenging to perform in Romanian, especially since I had only been in Romania for less than a month. However, my Romanian friends helped me with the correct pronunciation, which I deeply appreciated. I was immensely proud to sing in this beautiful language for such kind and hospitable people.  I performed this song at the art exhibition as the closing piece for the artistic play presented by my friend Yasser.

“Gold in Peace” is an artwork felt through sound and sight with hidden messages throughout the painting. The painting and the soundtrack, together, give you the feeling of peace originally only known after death. 

“Gold in Peace” is inspired by the horrific events that happened in June 1941, Targu Frumos, Romania during World War 2. But instead of spreading fear and hate - the painting gives you the comfort of knowing that the people whom suffered are now in Paradise, walking amongst God - in peace.

 The nature and the windy sky represents the free spirit we all have. A big tree in the front of the painting gives a slight feeling of something too close - as death is inescapable. And finally - the golden graves represent the dead human beings whom are still alive in a better place.

The painting is small format, framed with a retro, gold painted wooden frame. It’s painted on carton with professional gouche, metal flakes, acryl, posca pens and pva glue. 

My artwork is inspired by the “Death Train” in Târgu Frumos and is dedicated to shedding the light on and honoring the countless victims of genocides all over the world —both those who have perished and those still suffering today.

Throughout history, genocides have scarred humanity in every corner of the globe. Yet, selective remembrance persists—who decides whose suffering is memorialized, and whose story fades into silence? We often ask ourselves how such horrors were allowed to happen. We express shock, we demand answers: Where were the people who could have stopped it? How could they have remained silent?

But here we stand, witnessing the same atrocities unfold in real-time, as another genocide rages before our eyes. And so, the questions we ask of the past must be asked of the present: Where are we now?

We say, time and again, that we must learn from the lessons of history, yet those words alone are not enough. No real action is taken, no lasting change is realized. History continues its devastating repetition through the same patterns of violence and inaction. Over and over again.

So, how do we break this cycle? How do we become the generation that refuses to let history repeat itself?

For my personal artwork I decided to make a painting using acrylic paint. I wanted to show the hope and light, that the Jewish people needed to hold onto. To express that in the painting there is a person holding flower, this flower is Iris which is considered the flower of hope. The flower’s roots are wrapping around the hands, holding them. Around the flower is aura of light, shining and expanding. Lighting up the hope. Beside the roots the hands and flower are strangled by barbed wire. This wire is symbolizing the horrific incident that happened to those people. The pain, suffering of Jewish people. But the main message of this painting is not the pain, but the hope and strength that these people had. At the exhibitions I invited people to hang around the painting white paper flowers, flowers of hope.

When I create a 3D scene, I prefer it to provide information about the owners of the objects in the scene and to tell stories. I knew I wanted to make 3D models for my artwork, but I wasn't entirely sure what I would do. Then, I started learning about the stories of the Holocaust in Romania. I didn't know that Romania was involved in the Holocaust and committed Jewish genocide. When we visited the mass grave in Târgu Frumos, where 640 people are buried, the cemetery was in very poor condition. There were bushes and thorns everywhere. Most of the gravestones were unreadable. One gravestone had a picture of a man wearing a hat, but the face was damaged and broken, leaving only the hat visible.

In the following days, we visited the Museum of the Iași Pogrom. The museum mostly consisted of photos from the time of the massacre. However, in one of the rooms, there were objects recovered from a mass grave in 2010. There were necklaces, perfume bottles, buttons, and other items. The buttons had an immediate personal impact on me because, as soon as I saw them, a story came to my mind: The Story of the Buttons Falling from the Sky. When Atatürk passed away, a funeral procession was held in Istanbul. As his body reached Karaköy, people began throwing buttons onto the coffin. The Jewish citizens of the country were bidding farewell to Atatürk according to their mourning tradition by “tearing off the buttons from their shirts and jackets.” The idea of an object that symbolizes mourning and respect for a community being dug out of a mass grave after a horrific event deeply affected me. After modeling the objects in the museum (including the buttons), the photos, and the hat from the gravestone in 3D, I placed them in a 3D wagon with no doors or windows. These objects once belonged to people who lived, breathed, and had families and friends, but they were forcibly taken from their homes, loaded into the wagons, and sent to their deaths. The interactive part of my work was that a VR headset could be used to look at my models. You suddenly find yourself in a dark, claustrophobic wagon. In front of you are objects and photos related to the Holocaust. You can hear the noise of the train.

Throughout the work I did for Jemom, I questioned a lot of things. In my opinion, it was a museum that was psychologically difficult to work with. No matter how much you try to raise awareness or educate people, history repeats itself in every way. The current massacre happening in the Middle East is the biggest example of this. It has nothing to do with religion, society, or race. It has everything to do with being a compassionate human being.

“Echoes of Remembrance” combines two forms of art—a series of textile pieces and a painting, both dedicated to the memory of victims whose stories should never be forgotten.

The fabric strips are a visual representation of their absence and their voices, alternating between white and black. On those pieces, I’ve written messages, not names, allowing their lost stories to speak in a universal language. These messages are cries for remembrance, hope, and resilience. The simple contrast of black and white symbolizes the fine line between life and death, remembrance and forgetting. Each message is a quiet reminder to keep their memory alive. The painting mirrors this emotional depth. In it, a fiery red sun looms over a crowd of shadowy figures, emerging from a dark tunnel. This symbolizes their journey—a passage from life into oblivion. The swirling red is a haunting reminder of the violence and suffering they faced, but also a call for justice and acknowledgment. The dark figures are nameless, yet present, as if waiting to be remembered. These pieces speak across time, creating a conversation between present and past. They invite us to pause and reflect on the weight of memory, asking us how we, as individuals, can keep the stories of these lives alive.

My artwork is a proposal to save and rehabilitate the Jewish cemetery in Târgu Frumos as part of the city’s heritage and also to commemorate the victims of the tragic train accident in 1941, taking into consideration not to touch the individual graves, the mass grave or any stone of historical value, but rather the work will be to make it more organized and add some important elements such as planting 640 trees in the cemetery and in the city of Târgu Frumos to make people know more about the past and to commemorate the victims and to add a pergola to be a place for visitors to communicate and hold events inside it and informational and visual banners and art exhibitions and a main walkway and seats for visitors that will make the visitor experience better and more comfortable and also to be a cultural center to spread awareness among the people of the city.