Sheffield-based artist creating artwork inspired by Holocaust Centre North archive collection

Paula Kolar, curator of contemporary practices at the Centre, says that they are “really thrilled” to be working with the four artists who have been commissioned. “As an institution we are learning with the artists, they are looking at the gaps in the archive as much as what is there,” she says. “Working with memories from the last of the first-generation survivors and turning traumatic histories into artworks with contemporary relevance in an engaging, thought-provoking and ethical way is an incredibly challenging and daunting task. But we are so excited to be able to support them in their journey and to see their ideas and their individual artistic and emotional responses take shape over the coming months.”

Among the artists taking up the residency this year is Sheffield-based Maud Haya-Baviera who works in a variety of media including video, photography, sculpture and installation. She was selected, alongside Irina Razumovskaya, Ariane Schick and Matt Smith, from around a hundred applicants from all over the world. “There were many reasons for applying for the residency,” says Haya-Baviera. “I use a lot of archive materials which I then translate into my art and I try to unearth narratives that have not really been looked into before. This was a key part of the proposals from the Centre and that was fundamentally interesting to me. I also have family stories linked to the Holocaust – my grandfather was a political prisoner incarcerated in a concentration camp – and that affects my family still today. In my previous work I have often explored transgenerational trauma so I thought this would fit well with my creative practice.”

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Haya-Baviera was born in France and studied at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Lyon before coming to Sheffield to study for her masters. “I came for six months and I am still here 19 years later,” she says, laughing. “Soon after I arrived, I was offered a residency opportunity at the Site Gallery and I also successfully applied for Arts Council funding so I really felt that professionally I could make it here. I had a good social group and I felt supported by the creative community here. I have always felt a very warm welcome in Sheffield. There are lots of visual artists and other creatives here and there is a real feeling of solidarity in the community.” Some of her work is currently on display at the Graves Art Gallery in Sheffield in Postnatures, an exhibition created with the Heavy Water Collective which comprises Haya-Baviera and fellow artists Victoria Lucas and Joanna Whittle. For the show they made artwork in response to the gallery’s collection representing the relationship between women in nature.

Over recent weeks and months she has been very much focussed on the Memorial Gestures residency, visiting the archive and looking through the collection. “I found some beautiful, heart-breaking letters from people desperate to leave their home and find a place of safety elsewhere,” she says. “I think in the times we are living through we have a very complex relationship with our past and I am interested in creating an artwork that links our past to the present.” She has also travelled to the south of France to film in the location where her grandfather was last detained. “I have started to look at that footage and at finding ways to incorporate the words in the letters,” she says. “Most of my work is lens-based but the written word is also very important, and sound too, so I am experimenting with those media and how they might work together. I often explore dark subject matter in my work but I do always also want it to offer some kind of hope.”

Postnatures continues at the Graves Gallery, Sheffield until December 7. The Memorial Gestures exhibition opens at the Holocaust Centre North in September.