Parallel Traces is a cross-cutting, collaborative, pan-European project that offers a renewed look at the significance of Jewish heritage today.

Through the work of Tarbut Foundation, and especially Alina Marincean, Sighet became one of five participating cities.

Initiated by the European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Culture and Heritage (AEPJ), Parallel Traces’s objective is to unearth the traces of Jewish cultural heritage in urban architecture and planning in Europe, and to offer an original and rigorous perspective on the past, present and future of European Jewish history. It seeks to encourage mutual understanding and respect amongst different cultures and modes of artistic expression.

The project includes further, the development of an app “Parallel Traces” that will make available information on local Jewish Heritage to the general public; Organisation of a large pan-European contest in order to select a series of artworks presenting the reality of Jewish heritage; Hosting of local exhibitions presenting the selected works of the guest artists and the contest.

In the framework of the Parallel Traces project, each local partner invited a guest artist to highlight the project mission through digital artworks revealing the understanding and discovery of Jewish Heritage in the urban environment. The selected artists produced a body of work inspired by the Jewish Heritage of each of the partner cities, giving special relevance to the heritage in danger of disappearance, recovering memory through artistic creations.

The work in Sighet was created by Daniel Grünfeld. Daniel, who is originally from Oradea, Romania, is an internationally published photographer, currently living and working between Germany, Romania and Israel. Coming from a philosophy and social anthropology background, his main interests in photography are quasi ethnographic. In recent years, apart from his commercial and editorial work, he began working on various assignments concerning Jewish history in Romania.

You can find an interview with Daniel for Parallel Traces on the project’s website.

Alina Marincean is the Program Coordinator of Tarbut Foundation Sighet, and the curator of the Elie Wiesel Memorial House in Sighet. Alina was a jury member in the Parallel Traces competition and the chief coordinator of the Parallel Traces art project in Sighet and the upcoming exhibitions in Cluj and Sighet.

Daniel Grünfeld (Guest Artist) Detail of one of the six pictures created for Parallel Traces in Sighetu Marmației. April 2019.