Poland’s first solo exhibition of works by Jessica Ostrowicz – a British visual artist, sculptor, installation artist, and experimental filmmaker – is a deeply personal meditation on memory, trauma, loss, and the attempt to reconstruct that which has been shattered or erased. Ostrowicz’s work draws upon her family history and intergenerational experience – from her grandfather’s silenced Jewish roots, through the trauma of exile and the Holocaust, to contemporary reflections on belonging and the elusive meaning of “home.” Her exhibition, Remaining Without Returning, opens on 16 July 2025 at OP ENHEIM.

“What is once broken can never be whole again. We can never return to the home we had to leave. We may reach back to mend the past, but time reshapes all things; we can never stand in the same moment twice” says Ostrowicz.

The artist grew up knowing that part of her family had fled pogroms in Europe and that many relatives had perished in the Shoah. Her grandmother emigrated from Lithuania to England, and Ostrowicz only learned of her grandfather’s Jewish heritage after his death. As a representative of the third generation of Holocaust survivors, she explores themes of remembrance and post-Shoah existence. A confrontation with inherited trauma and family silence lies at the heart of her artistic inquiry.

The exhibition features a range of Ostrowicz’s recent works, including her most current pieces – monumental installations, films and drawings, as well as delicate, intimate objects in which she incorporates fragile remnants of everyday life: stones, paper, pipes, broken plates, eggshells, and hair. Each work becomes an act of quiet resistance against oblivion, carrying within it a single question: What does it mean to have a home, particularly for those who have lost one?

Since 2023, Ostrowicz has also worked as an educator in a men’s prison, where she engages inmates in a dialogue on the meaning of “home” in adult life. This ongoing collaboration allows her to find links between personal reflection and the inmates’ stories, observing the moment when a place begins to transform into a true home. This persistent search for meaning and understanding is the thread running through all of her artistic practice.
___________________________________

 Jessica Ostrowicz studied Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Dresden and Contemporary Art Practice with a focus on Critical Practice at the Royal College of Art in London. Since 2013, she has participated in numerous group exhibitions in the United Kingdom, Germany, and other European countries. In 2020, her works were part of the exhibition „FAMILY BUSINESS. Erinnern als künstlerisches Motiv (Remembering as an Artistic Motif)“ at the Centrum Judaicum in the New Synagogue in Berlin.

Over the years, Ostrowicz has been repeatedly funded by the Arts Council England. In 2024, she received the Women Artists in Residence scholarship from the Cordts Art Foundation for a residency in Berlin. The resulting solo exhibition „I Wish
I Was – Homeward Bound“ was on view at the Berlin nogallery from December 2024 to February 2025. Supported by the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham and the Rothschild Foundation, she has been working as the Artist in Residence at HMP Spring Hill prison since the beginning of 2025, conducting a series of workshops, exhibitions, and events. She provides the inmates with insights
into the development of an artistic practice while also offering access to art and culture in general. The residency, with an accompanying program at the Ikon Gallery, opens spaces for public dialogues on the role of art in the prison system. In
collaboration with Kunsthaus Dahlem in Berlin, OP ENHEIM in Wrocław now presents „Trwając bez powrotu“, the first comprehensive retrospective of her work.
___________________________________

 Philine Pahnke, born in 1995, studied Museology and Material Culture, History, and Public History in Würzburg and Berlin. During her master’s studies, she worked as a student assistant for temporary exhibitions at the Deutsches Historisches Museum (German Historical Museum), where she developed an interest in art and art history through practical curatorial work. Since November 2023, she has been working as an academic trainee with a focus on exhibitions and research at Kunsthaus Dahlem in Berlin. She has been involved in numerous exhibition projects and has published several articles, including the foundational research paper “To do whatever they could to save the Künstlerbund” – The Deutscher Künstlerbund in the Nazi Period in 2024. She also wrote around twenty texts on works by Heinz Mack, Richard Scheibe, and Georg Kolbe for the online collection catalog of the Berlin Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery) as part of the academic research and documentation of art after 1945. Her research focuses on the complex system of art and culture during the Nazi era, as well as the personal and structural continuities in the early years of the Federal Republic of Germany. In the field of art, she focuses on the 20th century, particularly on postwar modernism in Germany, as well as on contemporary artistic positions that engage with memory culture.
____________________________________________
 Organiser: OP ENHEIM, VOP, KUNSTHAUS DAHLEM
Honorary Patron: WOMAK

Patron: SDZLEGAL Schindhelm
Partners: Freundeskreis Kunsthaus Dahlem, Axel Springer Stiftung, OPEN Reklama Oksana Solnik Krzyżanowska, Heinle, Wischer und Partner Architekci, KEIM
 Media patrons: SZUM, MINT Magazine, TVP Kultura, NN6T, Rynekisztuka.pl, Format Pismo Artystyczne, Radio Wrocław Kultura, Well.pl, Miej Miejsce, Artinfo.pl