Jewish continuity – that is, the relationship between the older and younger generations of the Jewish people – is always a concern within the community. THE Maryland Jewish Museum addresses this discourse in partnership with the New Jewish Culture Fellowship (NJCF), is currently presenting the work of Fellows and Guest Curator by NJCF Writer and Curator Leora Fridman. Material/Legacy: Contemporary Works by New Jewish Culture Fellows presents 30 current and former NJCF artists, presenting a total of 49 works in the gallery, as well as a series of live performances during the opening, exhibition and closing weekend on June 11.
“At the heart of the Jewish Museum of Maryland’s mission is a call to imagine a better future,” said museum executive director Sol Davis. Hyperallergic. “Jewish artists play a crucial role in this project, both as creative people critically reflecting on today’s world, and as ‘heirs of the prophetic tradition,” as my collaborator Maia Ipp puts it in her essay, “Kaddish for an unborn Jewish avant-garde.”
“Contemporary Jewish artists are essential both for commenting on the contemporary world and for shaping the worlds to come, and it is time for Jewish institutions to give them the space and freedom to do so,” Davis added.
Fridman is a Mexican-American Jewish writer, curator, and educator whose work centers on issues of embodiment, care, and identity. His most recent book Static Palace (2022) and his next book FASCINATION, forthcoming in 2023, uses “the Nazi kink framework to consider embodied approaches to hereditary trauma.” Fridman participated in a virtual interview with Hyperallergic on the nature of contemporary Jewish art in general and in this exhibition, which “emphasizes resilience in contemporary forms by drawing on and grounding in Jewish texts, practices, stories and bereavements ancestral”, according to her exposure test.
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Sarah Rose Sharp: What themes did you see when choosing the work for the show; were you looking for something in particular?
Leora Fridman: The call for proposals was aimed specifically at New Jewish Culture Fellows, so it was really focused on community experience, as opposed to particular themes for an exhibit. I think a lot of what’s really exciting about this show is the feeling that these are artists who are part of a movement of pushing boundaries and taking risks in Jewish art, experimenting with how contemporary art can encounter cultural, social and religious aspects. needs and wants, etc.
The types of themes that have emerged on the show are diaspora and home, ritual and the reinvention of ritual, activist movements and political histories, and how these influence the contemporary in terms of contemporary activism, contemporary politics, willingness to draw, mentorship and support from the past. stories. Much of the work addresses issues of chosen and biological family, what it means to start a family, choose a family, and more. Issues of queer and trans identity, issues of embodiment and sexuality really push the boundaries of what was often seen in the past as acceptable or normative material for Jewish institutional display or Jewish institutional support.
SRS: What motivated the creation of this show?
LF: Jewish museums are usually historical museums or cultural history museums, not necessarily art museums. The Jewish Museum of Maryland has been at the forefront of making space for more risque, experimental, or less conventional forms of Jewish art, and contemporary art in general. There was a show last year called A Fence Around the Torah: Security and Insecurity in Jewish Life, which received a lot of attention. There is a big shift going on at the Jewish Museum of Maryland, particularly to bring in artists as cultural carriers of Jewish culture and to stage Jewish art as a legitimate and important aspect of Jewish culture that should be kept in a Jewish museum.
SRS: What does the community around the museum look like, demographically?
LF: The Jewish Museum of Maryland, historically, has been an older generation of more traditional Jews, not necessarily focused on politics or present day activism – and I think there are a lot of stereotypes about what that means. Hardware/Legacy brings a lot of young energy to these museums. One really amazing thing about the opening was being able to see a lot of older Jews, many of them retired, interacting with Jews in their 20s to 40s and interacting with their artistic creation, their politics, their similarities and their different concerns.
SRS: It seems to me that there were a lot of performances and lectures as part of the program – can you mention any highlights?
LF: At the opening, we had Sonic Mud: Nights of Ugavwhich was a performance on ceramic sculptures made by Julia Elsas that reinvent the biblical instrument, called the ugav, produced with various collaborators. We had a performative talk by Liat Berdugo, who is a critic and digital media artist, presenting archival photographs from the Jewish National Fund to examine the artist’s own relationship to the formation and maintenance of Zionism, through engagement with the forests of this region. And that was a real highlight of the exhibit because I think it had the potential to push some buttons in terms of thinking differently about Israel, Palestine, and Zionism within the Jewish community.
SRS: Could you attempt to answer the question of what it means to be a contemporary Jewish artist today?
LF: The art in Hardware/Legacy is a kind of questioning on what makes it Jewish art, if it is not specifically religious. If you look closely at the plays and performances of the show, there are actually a lot of references to ancient and biblical texts and religious practice, many people who have made extensive studies of these in order to inform their work creative – but you know, the majority of the work on the show doesn’t reference those. There have always historically been many ways of being Jewish, not all of which involve a relationship to biblical texts or ancient texts, not all of which involve religious practice – and there are, not only today, but for many, many generations.
