Coordinator: Andrea Blanar
Curator: Alex Brzezinski
Curatorial assistants: Julianna Joos, Judith Klugerman and Brigitta Kocsis

The Diefenbunker facility, Canada’s Cold War Museum is a national historic site that was built (1959-1961) to shelter Canadian government officials in the event of a nuclear attack.

Members of the Canadian- Hungarian Artists’ Collective were asked to submit works drawing on the themes of collective memory, immigration and communal victimhood. The works in this exhibition interpret these themes through personal history, family narrative or in some cases through a reaction to the nature of the facility.

Several artists had personally experienced the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The black and white photographs of Gabor Szilasi and Gabor Boros reflect the bleakness of this period in their portraits of people in the streets of Budapest. Sophie Fekete-Fehér’s paintings speak of a confrontation between superpowers during the cold war. Just as one would dig through the rubble of a war-torn site, Andrea Blanar salvages fragments from some previous past to create her shrines. A number of artists touch on fear and the need to seek refuge. This common human condition is explored in the works of Eva Ferenczy-Reichmann, Julianna Joos and Sandor Sipos. Vivian Törs’ and Judith Klugerman’s art reflects in different ways the responsibility of remembering the past and the deceased who was a part of it. For artist Tom Kapas remembering goes deeper in recalling the damage caused by the past to relationships. Dealing with ethnic and national identity are common themes in the works of Agi Zoni and Mary Keczan-Ebos.

Every artist whose work is in the Vault, Corridor or the Allard Room of the Diefenbunker has been stirred in some way by this facility to remember some association they or their families had to the cold war period.

As we listen to the news these days, it seems as if history has gone full circle. The cold war no longer seems to be so in the distant past. Terms such as national identity, displacement, immigration and the fear of violence and the threat of nuclear war have once again become part of our vocabulary. A facility like the Diefenbunker has once again acquired relevance.