3. Archeology of Absence (2025) – Irina Razumovskaya

2025. Ceramic slabs, suspended by chain, 70 x 100 x 6 cm.

“In the back of my mind,” spoken by Charlotte “Lottie” Gross (later
Gross-Brauer) in the Harris House reunion film, reflects on how
trauma lives quietly within. These words anchor Irina Razumovskaya’s
Archaeology of Absence, a deeply affecting installation shaped by
collections in the Holocaust Centre North Archive and the artist’s
own grief. Suspended porcelain slabs, echoing window frames,
form a ghostly house defined by voids. Their dual surfaces speak
of contrasting worlds: the reverse clad in white tiles, recalling the
sanitised spaces of arrival at concentration camps; the front cracked
and marked by traces of hands and scratches, resisting erasure.
Razumovskaya explores trauma as a lifelong duality, paralleled by
her own private loss — carried quietly through moments of joy and
ordinariness. This installation is a sanctuary of memory. As Holocaust
witnesses fade and history risks distortion, Archaeology of Absence
offers not spectacle, but presence: a fragile yet insistent reminder
that silence, too, holds stories.

With thanks to the Eger family archive whose collection inspired
this work, courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive.