Erna Rosenstein's Fairy Tales for Processing Trauma

Alison Gingeras, who curated Erna Rosenstein: Once Upon a Time at Hauser & Wirth (the first-ever monographic exhibition of Rosenstein’s work outside of Poland), explains that the qualities of Rosenstein’s work, in many ways, embody the way narrative and, specifically, fairy tales become coping mechanisms for trauma. Gingeras writes in the exhibition catalogue, “In both her artistic and literary oeuvre, it is impossible to separate biography from her ‘work.’” For Rosenstein, who was a Holocaust survivor, “[her] life is her medium.”