Memorial for brave matriarchs
Along the Road to Freedom exhibit a ‘thanksgiving’
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This article was published 07/11/2016 (3442 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Reflecting on a watercolour likeness of her grandmother Anna Goosen Giesbrecht, Wanda Andres recounts a time when the family matriarch sold her wedding band to buy bread for her children.
A mother of seven, Giesbrecht led her family safely out of the Soviet Union to Canada during the mid-1940s, under threat of persecution by Joseph Stalin. Her story is one of dozens memorialized by the Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery (MHCG) in a new exhibit titled Along the Road to Freedom.
Painted by Ray Dirks, curator of MHCG (600 Shaftesbury Blvd.), Along the Road to Freedom is a series of 26 watercolour paintings depicting the experiences of refugee women who protected their families during war. The exhibit is currently on display at the Manitoba Legislative Building in the Keystone Gallery.
“What’s important is that a lot of people, our children, my children, don’t know about this story and don’t understand how fragile democracy is,” Andres said.
“War stories are about women and children and how they survive the war. We talk about war heroes fighting but it’s the women who held the families together,” she said.
Andres, along with Nettie Dueck, Henry Bergen, and John Funk, approached Dirks eight years ago with the idea of creating an art project to honour and preserve the stories of the courageous women in their lives. Dirks agreed and got to work interviewing interested families, learning about the desperation and devastation of war, and eventually the peace families found in Canada and Paraguay.
“I know there were a number of places where I’d be interviewing people and there would be a lot of tears,” Dirks said. “When I’d sit down and paint those stories and interviews would be going through my mind the whole time.”
Dirks painted two pieces for Dueck of her mother Helena Niebuhr Loewen. Dueck said the interview with Dirks and meeting others with shared experiences has been therapeutic. It has also affirmed her faith, she said.
“For me, it was a thanksgiving to my mother, honouring her. Because all of our mothers really weren’t honoured in their life, and they would be very humbled to see that their children and other people have honoured their faith and their courage,” Dueck said.
Viewed collectively, the paintings are a nuanced reflection of the turmoil experienced by millions of people during the Russian Revolution and the Second World War. Individually, each painting is a testament to the resiliency of a woman who carried her family forward.
“There’s repetition and yet each (story) is still unique, and I think there’s power in both of that,” Dirks remarked. “When groups of people go through horrors, it’s shared with many people, but each one has an individual journey.
“Each painting is a story and I just wanted to capture some sense of the women, the things they went through, and their coming from the Soviet Union to Canada.”
Along the Road to Freedom is free to view and runs until Jan. 29, 2017.