Ydessa Hendeles

Born in Marburg, Germany, shortly after World War II, Ydessa Hendeles is the only child of Auschwitz survivors whose Jewish community in Zawiercie, Poland, was erased in the Holocaust. In 1951 the young family moved to rebuild their lives in Toronto, where Hendeles grew up and first made her mark in the contemporary art world. With a distinguished career as a gallerist, collector, and, most significantly, as an imaginative curator, she has become internationally renowned as a pioneering exponent of curating as a creative artistic practice. Indeed, her groundbreaking work is widely accepted today as a model by a new generation of curators. By using exhibition making itself as a medium, her artworks, too, challenge traditional concepts of art and artistic communication. The subjects she addresses often include notions of difference, diversity, and especially the ways in which prejudice and stereotyping filter through group and individual identities.