The following online exhibition was curated to celebrate the first exhibition of Boris Lurie's works in the UK, titled Boris Lurie: Ever the Radical at OXO Gallery London (23rd September - 11th October 2026), presented by Ben Uri Gallery and Museum and the Boris Lurie Art Foundation.
Witness and Wound traces the chronology of Boris Lurie’s artistic practice through his recurring engagement with trauma, memory, violence, and suffering. Spanning several decades, the exhibition follows the evolution of Lurie’s visual responses to the horrors he endured and witnessed during the Holocaust, revealing how these experiences continued to shape and reappear within his work.
The exhibition begins with Lurie’s artworks from the immediate years following his liberation from the Polte Works labour camp. Visceral and deeply expressive, these works reflect the overwhelming grief and pain that remained central to his artistic practice. The imagery frequently centres on the fragility of the human body, evoking the physical and emotional scars left by Nazi persecution.
The exhibition then moves through Lurie’s works of the 1950s, a period in which imagery of dismemberment and distortion became increasingly prominent. This phase marks an exploration of trauma through physicality, with disjointed and disfigured figures symbolising the fractured nature of memory and emotion. Through these forms, Lurie continued to grapple with his experiences and with the agonising sights of the camps.
The exhibition continues with Lurie’s iconic and radical NO!Art works, alongside works produced during the 1960s. During this period, Lurie increasingly used his practice as a vehicle for political and social protest as part of the NO!Artmovement, which he co-founded. Many of these works contain depictions of violence, exploitation, and suffering, employing graphic and controversial imagery to confront both the art world and wider societal norms. Lurie challenged the commodification of art and the sanitisation of narratives surrounding colonialism, consumerism, and war.
The exhibition concludes with Lurie’s works from the 1970s, a period in which he revisited and reintroduced some of the harrowing imagery first employed in his work of the 1940s. During this period, direct imagery of the Holocaust returned to his practice. By reengaging with these painful images, Lurie continued to assert his refusal to allow the atrocities he had witnessed and suffered to be forgotten.
Across the exhibition, Witness and Wound follows the recurring presence and transformation of trauma within Lurie’s practice, from the immediate aftermath of liberation through to his later reengagement with Holocaust imagery. The exhibition presents a body of work shaped by memory, suffering, and an enduring insistence on bearing witness.
