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Elaine Reichek
b. 1943 in New York City;
lives in New York City
Selected Exhibitions:
Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium;
Museum of Modern Art, NY; Jewish Museum,
NY; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin,
Ireland; Grey Art Gallery, New York University, NY
Shoyn Vider?,
1995
Ink on gelatin silver prints, hand embroidery on silk;
10.5"
x 13.5"
Shoyn Vider?
(
Yet Again?) was commissioned by curator Rafael
von Uslar for an exhibition titled
Zimmerdenkmäler
(
Room
Memorials) in 1995 at the Museum Bochum in Germany.
The occasion for the exhibition was an invitation from the
citizens of Bochum officially welcoming back the Jews who
were forced to leave during the Holocaust. “The work com-
ments on Germany's insistence in portraying itself as an
agrarian society long after it had become an industrialized
nation. Despite being dated 50 years apart (1900/1950),
both photographs show the ‘Fatherland’ literally being worked
by its women, who are pictured bending over – an extremely
telling position. I used the Yiddish phrase because it is tied to
the German language but articulates a Jewish point of view.”
Mark Podwal
b. 1945 in Brooklyn, NY; lives in
New York City
Selected Collections/Honors:
Victoria and Albert Museum,
London; Metropolitan Museum
of Art, NY; Jewish Museum, NY;
Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Library
of Congress, Washington, DC;
Officer of the French Order of
Arts and Letters
Torah Ark Curtain,
1996
Woven by Les Ateliers Pinton,
direction by Gloria F. Ross
Aubusson tapestry; 98" x 65.5"
Collection of the Herbert & Eileen Bernard Museum of
Judaica, Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York
“
My
Torah Ark Curtain
for Congregation Emanu-El juxtaposes
the iconography of traditional
parokhets
with visual metaphors
such as the Holy Temple wrapped in a Torah scroll. A pair of
wings, frequently embroidered on Torah ark valances, traditionally
symbolize the cherubim protecting the Ark of the Covenant.
The Torah ark valance
(
kapporet)
,
a short curtain hung on the
Torah Ark, above the curtain, first appeared in Eastern Europe
at the end of the 17th century. When the rabbi initially saw my
sketch of the wings, he interpreted the image as representing
the
Shekhinah.
I very much liked his observation.”
Gloria F. Ross previously collaborated with artists Robert
Motherwell, Frank Stella, Louise Nevelson, and her sister,
Helen Frankenthaler.
Jacqueline Nicholls
b. 1971 in Nottingham, England; lives in London, England
Selected Exhibitions:
Ben Uri Gallery, London; Bash Studios, London;
Rivington Gallery, London
The In-Between Yeshiva,
2008
Synamay corsey, ribbon; 24" 16" x 10"
“
This
Sefer Torah
corset is based on a pregnant woman’s shape. In the Talmud in
Niddah 30a,
the fetus is poetically described as learning
Torah
from an angel in the womb. On exiting, the
angel strikes the baby, forming the indent in the upper lip, causing the baby to forget all the
knowledge that it once knew. I have always understood this piece from the fetus’s perspective.
Thinking about it from the mother’s point of view – throughout the pregnancy, her body is a
place of revelation, a
makom torah,
a primal
beit midrash
for the fetus. On
Kol Nidrei
evening,
we mention the Upper and Lower
Yeshivot.
Well, there is a place in-between these worlds –
Yeshiva In-Between.”