Faculty Profile: Paul Epp

Epp recently completed a 10-year project memorializing the Mennonites of Ukraine



Photo: Marina Dempster.
Faculty of Design Professor Paul Epp has completed a significant 10-year project in cooperation with the International Mennonite Memorial Committee for the Former Soviet Union (IMMC-FSU) with the installation of a major monument in the town of Zaporizhia, Ukraine. The site is located in a small park marking the former Mennonite village of Khortitsa, the cradle of Mennonite life in Tsarist Russia.

The project memorializes the people and events associated with the Dutch Mennonites who once lived in the Ukraine. Part of the Protestant Reformation (1517–1648), the Mennonites migrated first to the Prussian controlled Vistula Lowlands (now known as Gdansk in Poland), and later to southern Ukraine, invited by Catherine the Great of Russia. While many also began migrating to settlements in North America in the 1800s, a significant number of Mennonites were still living in the Ukraine at the start of the communist revolution.



The monument in Zaporizhia, Ukraine, designed by Epp.“Many left,” explains Epp, himself a part of the Mennonite community. “My father, as a child, left with his parents in 1924. My mother and her parents left as refugees in 1929. They were lucky to have made their escape, as things grew increasingly difficult for the Mennonites trapped behind the Iron Curtain.” Many who stayed were exiled in Siberia where they perished. During Stalin’s purges of 1937-38, most of the remaining men were arrested and shot, and their widows dispersed into the far eastern corners of the Soviet Union where they too, disappeared. In all, 30,000 Mennonites died.

The Zaporizhia monument, designed by Epp, was fabricated locally with granite cut from a former Mennonite quarry under the guidance of Walter Friesen and Harvey Dyck (Canada), and Ludmilla Kariaka and Boris Letkeman (Ukraine). Three silhouettes of a woman, a man and two children stand on a base with the inscription “Blessed are they who mourn,” in English, German, Russian and Ukrainian.

At the October 10 unveiling, Epp remarked:

The memory of our loved ones is important to all of us. We cherish their pictures, as a way of remembering them. In our homes, we often have a space devoted to these pictures. This is usually a flat surface like a mantel or a shelf. Our pictures of family members are arranged there in memory of those that can't be present. They represent people that are away, or who are no longer living. Such a collection of photographs becomes a special place because of the emotional impact it has on us. We may enjoy them in private contemplation, or share them with family or friends. This 'space' exists, in our lives, because it is deeply important to us.

I have created such a space for this memorial. The surface is flat and pictures are placed on it as a public symbol of a private collection. They are arranged a bit formally and a bit informally, in the way that we typically do it. Because this exercise is symbolic and the setting is outdoors, in a park, the objects are large, the real size of the people represented.

But what if the people who are being pictured had vanished? What if they had disappeared? I have suggested this by using only their outlines. They are not identifiable. The individuals have disappeared, leaving a void. Instead of a picture of someone, we have only a silhouette, a representation of loss. When we look to see our loved ones, all we see is an empty space. Where we expect something, there is nothing.

This public representation is intended an enduring reminder of those who have vanished and of our own loss.



At the site of mass graves, commemorating the massacre of an entire village in 1919.About the project, Epp says, “Designers serve others. This seems to be an immutable principle, despite our reflexive narcissism. It’s our greatest strength and our greatest value. We are lucky, as designers, to be able to play this role. Sometimes our requirements to serve can come as surprises to us. This project came as a surprise to me, and is fully outside of the type of work that I usually do. But I was called to serve, and I did, willingly and gratefully.”