In 2021, the PHRF approached Mural Arts Philadelphia to initiate the creation of a Holocaust remembrance mural for the Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza. The goal was to add a new visual storytelling element to the site. Following an international selection process, I was invited to realize the mural, based on my proposal from March 2024. The proposal drew on texts gathered from members of the Stakeholder Committee through the Memory Forms and proposed extending this process across Philadelphia to gather contributions for the final design.

A residency at the Center for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at Universität Hamburg guided the development of distinct calligraphic styles, and the final work was painted in Berlin before being shipped to Philadelphia, using a custom-developed method titled Layering and Displacement, which systematically fragments and reassembles the contributed texts. After a month-long installation, the mural was dedicated on September 26, 2025, as the first publicly commissioned, large-scale Holocaust remembrance mural in a civic space in the United States.

The Domino of Displacement
Concept and Meaning: Historical continuity and construction of collective memory

The Holocaust is often narrated as an ending: the destruction of European Jewry, the downfall of Nazi Germany. Yet every ending is also a beginning. Lay-lah Lay-lah approaches this history as an evolving force, continually unfolding. Displacement set in motion during the Holocaust reverberates across time and continents, shaping identities, languages, and cultures long after the events themselves. Just as individual memory is fluid and subjective, so is collective memory ever-evolving, reshaped by the narratives and silences of its time and place.

The forced uprooting that began in the 1930s and 40s did not stop with the liberation of camps or the end of the war. It propelled survivors into new geographies, reshaping cities, communities, and cultures far beyond Europe. That domino effect of displacement continues to shape the present, influencing how societies negotiate belonging, identity, and memory. The mural stands as a reminder that what began then is still unfolding.

Philadelphia as a Setting
Site-specific Context

The mural stands at the Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza, in dialogue with Nathan Rapoport’s Monument to Six Million Jewish Martyrs. Erected in 1964 by survivors and community leaders, it was the first public Holocaust memorial in the United States, a work of grief and defiance that framed the Plaza as a civic space of mourning and resistance. Lay-lah Lay-lah extends this legacy, connecting remembrance to the complexities of the present.

The mural is also in dialogue with Philadelphia’s most prominent landmarks along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway: City Hall with William Penn rising above its tower at one end, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art at the other. Positioned between these anchors, the Plaza situates Holocaust remembrance within the city’s civic landscape, placing memory alongside symbols of governance, democracy, and art.

Every line in the mural comes from Philadelphia’s residents. Through a citywide call, participants were asked to share fragments of their childhood: lullabies, poems, and prayers.

These contributions were gathered through Memory Forms, which invited people to record both genealogical details and textual traces passed down within families. The responses revealed how language and memory cross borders and generations, carrying the marks of displacement while also sustaining identity and belonging.

This work was shaped through community gatherings across Philadelphia, where residents offered their languages and memories into the project.

During a residency at the Center for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at Universität Hamburg I developed distinct calligraphic styles for each contribution, situating them within the long history of written transmission. Later, in Berlin, I painted the mural on parachute cloth panels, then it was shipped across the Atlantic and installed in Philadelphia.

Displacement as Method
Artistic strategies, layering, and calligraphic practice

The creation process mirrors the theme of uprooting. In the studio, my approach involved writing, fragmenting, shifting, and overwriting, generating a visual polyphony where texts are fractured and reassembled. This recalls the cut-up strategies of the Dadaists and of Burroughs, where fragments are recombined into new constellations of meaning.

It reflects the instability of memory, comments on cultural erasure through assimilation, and exposes the manipulation of historical narratives, while at the same time affirming the persistence of cultures that survive despite displacement.

The palette moves between dusk and dawn, destruction and renewal. Its spectrum captures fragility and transformation: embers and ash, blooming meadow and twilight. Each layer, as in Japanese watercolor practice, is conceived as a complete composition on its own, yet only through their interrelation do they form the mural as a whole.

Painting in Berlin. Photos by Neomi Itzaky

This work was made possible by:

Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation