Jew ish

In 2017 I started exploring the idea of identity, looking at my Hassidic upbringing and how it has an affect on my day to day. I bought into my studio all the Judaic items that I grew up with and started out by experimenting how different objects of Judaica and the mundane talk with one another, these depictions are documented as ready-made’s and photography works. Questions of Jewish law and more broadly religion, tradition, culture and anti-Semitism emerged from these works, challenging excepted notions of the Jewish faith and pairing them with the morals of society today. For example, the ‘9 commandments’ artwork questions the second commandment that states ‘You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth’. (Exodus 20:3-4)

‘Jew ish’ talks about being in flux, the unknown, the pressures from family and community to conform to a certain religion, questioning the laws of that religion and seeing how they can harmoniously be adapted to co-exist in my own life within a multicultural environment.

9 Commandments

2017

Sandblasted Granite with Metallic paint inlay

2 - 72 x 30 x 5 cm

Sandblasted by David Asher Brook at Shot by Campbell Henderson