Yankl 'N' Yankl went to the market

Berlin, Bremen,Buenos Aires, Zürich 2016

4 tablet skype installation

For this project Elianna Renner draws on her own family history. Her great-grandfathers, Yankel Solomon and Yankel Wasserman, were victims of a pogrom that swept the city of Iași in northeastern Romania in 1941. “Yankl and Yankl went to the market and never returned,” says the artist’s mother, Edith Renner, of the incident. She was only three-years-old at the time. Her cousin, Cora Borensztein, who lives in Buenos Aires, says she heard from her father that Edith Renner was at the market with the two Yankels when the raid took place. Mrs. Renner was apparently handed over to a passer-by who returned her safely home. The core of Yankl ’n’ Yankl Went to the Market is the artist’s endeavor to get to the heart of a crucial historical event by piecing together handed-down fragments of family lore. In order to fill in gaps in a story that will always be incomplete, she conducted four online conversations with individuals in Buenos Aires, Berlin, Tel Aviv, and Zurich.

Participants: Agathe Chion, theatre director, Berlin; Cora Borensztein, family member, Buenos Aires; Edith Renner, family member, Zurich; Eli Preminger, musician, Tel Aviv.