NARRATIVES
When do you feel safe?
How do we imagine Jewish futures, safety, and solidarity?
CURATORIAL STATEMENT BY LIORA OSTROFF
Val Schlosberg and Rosabel Rosalind investigate how Judaism’s historical and mythological narratives address the safety of Jewish communities. From the ancient and biblical account of the Israelites’ trials in Egypt, and extra-canonical stories and folktales such as the Golem in Prague or Judith beheading Holofernes, to real historical and recent violence, we see recurrent themes in Jewish narrative: divinely-ordained violent self-defense, ritual and prayer as defense, the divine as a delimited protector. These artists reckon with the relevance that these narratives have to Jewish life today: confrontations with white supremacy, cultural imperialism and what it means to pursue justice.
Featured artists
Rosabel Rosalind, Kaddish (Or Judith Slaying Holofernes), Colored pencil, conte, and charcoal on paper, 2019
Rosabel Rosalind was born in 1996 in Los Angeles, California. In 2017, she received her BFA in printmaking, painting, and drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Rosabel has been included in group exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hyde Park Art Center, and Sullivan Gallery in Chicago. In 2018, Rosabel was a recipient of a Fulbright Austria Combined Grant, where she did research at the Jewish Museum Vienna in their Schlaff Collection of anti-Semitic objects and postcards. As a result of this work, Rosabel has exhibited in solo exhibitions at Vienna's Museums Quartier and Improper Walls Gallery. Rosabel is currently pursuing her Master of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University.
Val Schlosberg, Ceramic Vessels series
Val Schlosberg is a writer, artist, and educator currently based in Zhigaagoong (Chicago, IL). Val is interested in Jewish mysticism, gay time travel, and summoning golems. Val got their degree in Art Theory at the University of New South Wales and is currently undertaking studies toward ordination as a Hebrew Priestess at the Kohenet Institute.
Val’s work deals with themes of Jewish mysticism, ecology and ecotheology, speculative futures and apocalypse, and gay love and sex. Val is a ritualist as well as a propagandist. As a ritualist, their vessels stitch together the ancient and the prophetic, containing the possibility of becoming a portal between the living dreams of ancestors and the holy desire of descendants. As a propagandist, they hope to carry the legacy of the anti-fascist clay monster of Jewish myth, the golem, by using their creations to shame, mock, and attack Empire and its agents, while simultaneously celebrating the spectacular irresistability of militant joy, freedom, and frivolous faggotry.