the cover and a selection of pages from the fabric book I just finished, This summer I spent a lot of time sleeping with my head in a pool of moonlight.
The pages are printed on canvas, muslin, and cotton bedsheets and are silkscreened, printed with photo intaglio processes, drawn on, and embroidered.
Take a look at my new series “Emanu (Our Mother)” up on my site now!
“Let the Jewish daughters in all future generations know the great privilege they have and the great responsibility they carry.” Esther
I have found that in Judaism, it is often the women who preserve history and uphold cultural identity. Emanu highlights different approaches to gendered roles through Judaism as a matrilineal society, in contrast to our patriarchal society today. This is why I am drawn to the story of the matriarch Rachel,with whom I share a name, and her strength, perseverance and personification of a Godly presence in the world. I am inspired by my own positive experiences of participating in women dominated spaces and actions that express the importance of women as strong spiritual beings. This series explores alternative approaches and coping strategies to life as a woman confronted by the violence of a male dominated society. Emanu serves to celebrate women spheres within Judaism, and examine ritual and religious identification and spirituality through a feminist lens and the female form.
Additionally. the self portrait plays a vital role in photography as a vehicle for self love and the promotion of positive self talk. Emanu is a platform for creating my own understanding of Judaism through both text and photography.
The examination of women spaces and stories, is in direct relation to my experience as a Jewish woman who has, like Rachel the matriarch, endured suffering and deceit, who posses strength, and who upholds a desire to pass down tradition. These photographs also examine modern day ideas regarding the Shechinah, as the soft empathetic counterpart of God, the feminine aspect of God in the human form.
See more here
The Jewish girl from Sefrou - Zinaida Serebriakova
Portrait of a Moroccan Woman - Josep Tapiro y Baró
Portrait of Woman in a Garden - Hassan El Glaoui
Moor - Zinaida Serebriakova
The Golden Key or the Adventures of Pinocchio by Alexander Koshkin
Erich Schütz __ Two Butterfly Fairies Kissing on a Holly Branch
sniper-at-the-gates-of-heaven:
1. a poster in russian, kumyk, georgian, armenian, and azeri exhorts the ppl to join the soviet cause.
2. celebrating the socialist struggle of baku
3. poster encouraging uzbek workers and farmers to deposit their earnings in the state bank.
4. a poster aimed at tatar women calling on them to join with russian proletarian women.
5. tatar agricultural poster featuring words from lenin, stalin, and kalinin.
see more soviet-era posters directed at the ppl of the caucasus, here.