Eduard Freudmann (born 1979 in Vienna) is an Austrian visual artist based in Vienna. He studied visual art at the Academy of Fine arts Vienna and at the Bauhaus University Weimar and is a researcher and teacher for Trans-disciplinary art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. He is most known for his interventions in public space and projects dealing with the commemoration of the Holocaust. Together with the Austrian architect Gabu Heindl he won the controversial monument competition From Those You Saved in Warsaw.
Major works
The White Elephant Archive
A performance project that explores the Holocaust from the perspective of the generation of Austrians living today. The performance was shown between 2012 and 2018 in different settings in Austria, Germany, and Poland, Israel, Hungary and the United States. The piece is performed in English, since many of the individuals it should speak to — descendants of Jews who escaped Vienna from National-socialism, living today in Britain, the United States and Israel — do not understand German. Matti Bunzl, the director of the Wien Museum, sees the White Elephant Archive performance as an "examination of history and memory in post-Holocaust Vienna," a "product of deep knowledge of Austria’s past" and Freudmann as "one of the most original artists working in Central Europe today."
The Monument May Be A Forest
A monument project Freudmann created in collaboration with the Austrian architect Gabu Heindl. It is the winner of the controversial monument competition From Those You Saved in Warsaw, to commemorate Polish righteous gentiles who saved Jews during the Holocaust. The plans to erect the monument next to the POLIN Museum, in the heart of the former Warsaw Ghetto, were harshly criticized by a significant number of Polish Jews. The president of the Jewish Community of Warsaw (pl) Anna Chipczyńska said she had regrets that they could not find an alternative site that would allow both the honouring of the Righteous Among the Nations as well as avoiding controversies and disagreements. Polish writer Bożena Keff expressed her view that the location of the monument was less about respecting history and more an act of propaganda. Freudmann and Heindl decided to include the controversies in their monument project and proposed to plant a forest nursery consisting of thousands of saplings next to the museum. After 1,5 years the saplings would be replanted as a forest at an urban location in Warsaw to be agreed upon by the protagonists of the conflict.
An international jury of 10 architects, artists, and curators chose The Monument May Be A Forest as winning proposal, because the project represented the commemoration of the processual aspect rather than just using imposing physical presence, it is based on "notions of care, commitment, fragility and risk" as well as the actual act of sheltering the Jews and has the potential to spread the commemoration across time and space." POLIN's deputy director Zygmunt Stępiński said it was a good opportunity for the museum, opening up space for an educational program that had the opportunity to spread across the country. He also considered it was more complex than just setting a monument in front of the museum. The architect of the POLIN Museum, Rainer Mahlamäki, one of the judges who voted for the trees, sees the winner of the competition as a new type of art and memorial as opposed to a monument. After the jury's decision had been published in April 2015, Sigmund Rolat, the founder the organization Remembrance and Future Foundation that run the project, denounced the design. In February 2016 Rolat invited the Israeli sculptor Dani Karavan to take on the project but he declined after he had read an article written by Freudmann and Heindl, in which they criticize the foundation and their course of action. In April 2016 Karavan announced that he accepted the commission to build the monument, thereby sparking another furor. To this day the monument for the Polish righteous gentiles has not been built.