French artist Tania Mouraud exhibition “In Honour of a Reborn Pain”

“In Honour of a Reborn Pain” is a project by French artist Tania Mouraud (b. 1942, Paris), created for the Vytautas Kasiulis Museum of Art. The exhibition explores Litvak culture and historical memory through the Yiddish language, drawing on poems by Avram Sutzkever, Rivka Basman, Chaim Grade, and songs written in the Vilnius Ghetto.

Mouraud’s latest works continue her research into the visual power of typography, especially Yiddish script. Using paper, fabric, and steel, she brings historical trauma into the present through a distorted calligraphy of her own invention. Key works include In the salty immensity of human tears (2024), Conversation (2020), Glissando (2023), and Words Search (2015), as well as film Once Upon a Time (2012), which evokes ecological anxiety.

The artist poses urgent questions: How do we respond to violence? How do we act for peace? Her declaration I Still Have a Dream! (2014–2024) underlines hope as a form of resistance.

Of Jewish and Romanian heritage, Mouraud began as a painter and later expanded into photography and video. Known for minimalist yet emotionally charged works, she avoids pathos in search of clarity. A major figure in French contemporary art, she has exhibited at MoMA, the Pompidou Centre, and PS1 in New York. Since 1975, Yiddish forms and verbal fragments have shaped her socially engaged art.