ABSTRACT
This chapter asks how third-generation Israeli artist Ram Katzir has opened up a space for dialogue and self-reflection about guilt and innocence, and the grey zones in between that characterize the connection to Nazism of several European countries, namely Germany, Holland, and Lithuania. Art exhibitions, due to their theatrical and performative aspect, become open arenas where meanings are negotiated between artists, viewers, and the institutions that house them. This interplay is made particularly apparent in an art installation project entitled Your Coloring Book by Ram Katzir, artist and grandchild of Holocaust survivors. The exhibition space Katzir created in the basement of the Contemporary Art Centre of Vilnius was painted baby blue and golden brown, a reference to the predominant colors of a church in Vilnius built on the grounds of a former Jewish synagogue, whose history had thus been completely erased and replaced with Christian symbolism.
