Matronita: Jewish Feminist Art Exhibition Opens in Ein Harod

Central exhibition for the year 2012 at
The Mishkan Le’Omanut, Museum of Art, Ein Harod

Matronita:Jewish Feminist Art
Opening: Friday, 11:00 a.m. January 27, 2012
Curators: Dvora Liss and David Sperber

For the first time in Israel a museum has organized a major exhibition of Jewish feminist art by women who come from a traditional Jewish background.

Jewish Feminist art shares its themes with feminist art in general. Usually these are familiar subjects, such as power and oppression, body image, women as periphery, object-subject, blood and menstruation, and so on. Feminist Jewish works deal with subjects unique to the Jewish experience: niddah and immersion, hair covering, halakhic questions such as the problem of the agunah or halakhic infertility, women’s prayer, and women in the study hall.

(Above: Nechama Golan, You Shall Walk in Good Ways, 1999, photocopies of Talmud pages and polymer glue, 30x12x18. Collection of the artist)

These artists are informed by feminist art and gender discourse but also by traditional Judaism. They actively reexamine and reconstruct the tradition, while placing it in a critical yet constructive light.

Among the group of talented artists from Israel, North America and Europe the exhibition will showcase two well-known American artists who were pioneers in the field. Helène Aylon (b. 1931) will travel from New York to install her show. Helène is a prominent eco-feminist and in the 80s was involved in environmental activism. In the 90s she turned a feminist eye on to God and the Torah and she will exhibit three installations at Ein Harod. Mierle Laderman-Ukeles (b. 1939) is well known for her Maintenance art of the 70s. In 1969 she wrote Manifesto for Maintenance Art that questioned binary systems of opposition that articulate differences between art/life, nature/culture, and public/private. The manifesto proposed undoing boundaries that separate the maintenance of everyday life from the role of an artist in society. In 1977 she first performed Mikva dreams- A Performance part of Maintenance Art Tales at Franklin Furnace, New York. She will be showing two prints from the performance.

Matronita invites the viewer to reflect on the complexities of the feminist Jewish experience as the artists work at reconciling Jewish law and feminism.

United States artists:
Helène Aylon, Mierle Laderman-Ukeles, Carol Hamoy and Doni Silver Simons.

European artists:
Jacqueline Nicholls and Myriam Tangi.

Israeli artists:
Andi Arnovitz, Raya Brukental, Orit Freilich, Nechama Golan, Chana Goldberg, Hadassah Goldvicht, Hila Karabelniker, Ruth Kestenbaum Ben Dov. Chagit Molgan, Rivka Potchebutzky, Ruth Schreiber, Studio Armadillo (Anat Stein, Hadas Kruk), and Dafna Shalom.

The Museum is open Sunday-Thursday 9:00-16:30
Friday 9:00-13:30
Saturday 10:00-16:30

Please feel free to call us for further information at: 046531670

www.museumeinharod.org.il
museum@einharodm.co.il