Our Struggle: Responding to Mein Kampf March 9, 2010

ART EXHIBITION THE CONTEMPORARY JEWISH MUSEUM PRESENTS Our Struggle: Responding to Mein Kampf In a new exhibition making its North American debut at the Contemporary Jewish Museum this February, French artist Linda Ellia turns the page on history by inviting 600 people to transform one of the most inflammatory books of the 20th Century -- Hitlers notorious memoir and manifesto Mein Kampf (My Struggle, in English). Ellia, who is Jewish, unexpectedly stumbled across a French translation of the book in 2005 and felt immediately compelled to respond. She spent 3 years distributing the pages of Mein Kampf one by one to individuals from all walks of life professional artists, youth and ordinary citizens each invited to paint, draw, sculpt, collage, and blacken the page how they wished in response to the one they received. Six hundred pages came back to her and she gathered the results into a collective artwork and book titled Notre Combat (Our Struggle, in English) published in 2007 by Seuil Editions, a leading publisher of art books in France. Our Struggle: Responding to Mein Kampf is the first North American exhibition of the hundreds of pages returned to Ellia. In addition to the work on view, the Museum will screen a documentary about Ellia and the project, provide a resource room about Mein Kampf developed in collaboration with the Holocaust Center of Northern California, and create opportunities for visitors to leave their own responses on a collective chalkboard canvas. Our Struggle: Responding to Mein Kampf An exhibition conceived and created by French artist Linda Ellia that features over 600 individual artistic responses to Hitlers notorious memoir and manifesto. February 11 June 15, 2010 Open daily (except Wednesday) 11 AM- 5:00 PM Open Thursday, 1 PM 8:00 PM Contemporary Jewish Museum 736 Mission Street, San Francisco 94103 415.655.7800 [email protected] www.thecjm.org $10.00 adults $8.00 students and senior citizens with a valid ID $5 on Thursdays after 5 PM. Members and youth 18 and under are free.