Coping with the Holocaust Through Art

This episode of All of It explores the powerful artistic legacy of Chea Stoica, a Romani Holocaust survivor who began creating visual art in her 50s as a response to the rising neo-Nazi movement in Austria. Born in Vienna in 1934, Stoica endured the Nazi persecution of Roma people, including imprisonment in concentration camps. Decades later, driven by urgency and a desire to educate the public, she turned to painting using cardboard and acrylics—self-taught but profoundly expressive. Her work, featured in the exhibition 'Chea Stoica, Making Visible' at New York’s Drawing Center, juxtaposes vibrant, colorful depictions of pre-war Roma life with haunting, stark images of suffering, including the iconic black boots of a Nazi officer. The exhibition not only honors her as an artist but also amplifies a historically marginalized narrative: the Roma Holocaust, which saw the systematic extermination of an estimated half a million Roma people. Laura Hopman, executive director of the Drawing Center, emphasizes the timeliness of Stoica’s work amid today’s global rise of far-right ideologies, positioning her art as both a personal reckoning and a universal call for remembrance and resistance.