Austin artist Yuliya Lanina has won Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award.
Lanina will spend summer 2021 in Austria working on a short hand-painted animated video entitled “The Mystery of Freedom,” inspired by the legacy of Viennese-born artist and architect Friedl Dicker-Brandeis who died at Auschwitz in 1944.
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While researching Jewish women artists, Lanina came across Friederika “Friedl” Dicker-Brandeis, a successful Bauhaus-educated artist and designer. Along with many Jews from Central Europe, she was sent to the camp at Teresienstadt. While enterned, Dicker-Brandeis taught art classes to the children at the camp, most of whom were separated from their parents and siblings.
Called by the survivors “the mystery of freedom,” Dicker-Brandeis preserved some 5,000 drawings and collages by the children. Before she was transferred to Auschwitz, she hid the artworks in two suitcases, which were found and delivered to the Jewish community in Prague.
Lanina will use elements of the paintings by Dicker-Brandeis and her young students bringing them to life through animation.
The final video artwork, “The Mystery of Freedom,” will be presented at Vienna’s “Tricky Women/Tricky Realities” festival in 2022.
