Through the Eyes of Rachel Marker

A Literary Installation by Moira Roth
The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, Berkeley, California
January 22 – June 28, 2013

Photos and notes used in the Rachel Marker exhibit at the Magnes are spread out on a table at Nabolom Bakery in Berkeley. Photo: Moira Roth.

Curated by Alla Efimova, Through the Eyes of Rachel Marker was a literary installation by art historian and writer Moira Roth. The exhibition brought to life Roth’s fictional persona, Rachel Marker, a Czech Jewish poet and playwright whose imagined experiences intersected with key figures and events of 20th-century European history.

Through archival material, publications, video, and epistolary texts, the installation blurred boundaries between fact and fiction, personal memory and collective trauma. Efimova’s curatorial vision transformed Roth’s intricate narrative into a spatial environment, inviting viewers to engage with historical imagination as an artistic form.

The exhibition paid tribute to the Jewish émigré experience and was inspired by real individuals, including Roth’s lifelong mentors and Holocaust survivors Rose Hacker and Alice Herz-Sommer.

Additionally, Alla Efimova wrote and produced an exhibition brochure to accompany the exhibition:

Read Exhibition Brochure