A New Exhibit at the Henry S. Miller Judaica Research Room at Walsh Library and Quinn Library, September 15-December 23, 2024
Fordham Libraries and Fordham’s Center for Jewish Studies present the art of Siona Benjamin.
As a Bene Israel Jewish woman from India now living in the United States, Siona Benjamin is a Jewish artist creating cross-cultural and transcultural art. Her perspective bridges the traditional and the modern and sparks discourse across cultures. Having grown up in a Hindu and Muslim society, educated in Catholic and Zoroastrian schools, raised Jewish in India, and now calling America home, Siona Benjamin always has been reflecting on cultural boundary zones.
Her perspective remains transcultural and multicultural at heart, combining the imagery of her past with the role she plays in America today. Her art is a kaleidoscope of images inspired by illuminated manuscripts and multicultural mythology. The blue-skinned characters are a signature feature of Siona Benjamin’s paintings. She sees them as self-portraits of sorts through which she explores ancient and contemporary dilemmas. These characters become symbols of a timeless global identity free of prejudices and boundaries.
Siona Benjamin is an artist originally from Bombay, now living and working in Montclair, New Jersey. Her work reflects her background of being brought up Jewish in a predominantly Hindu and Muslim India. In her paintings she combines the imagery of her past with the role she plays in America today, making a mosaic inspired by both Indian miniature paintings and Jewish and Christian illuminated manuscripts.
The exhibit was curated by Amy Levine-Kennedy and Magda Teter
About the Artist:
Siona Benjamin is an artist originally from Bombay, now living and working in Montclair, New Jersey. Her work reflects her background of being brought up Jewish in a predominantly Hindu and Muslim India. In her paintings she combines the imagery of her past with the role she plays in America today, making a mosaic inspired by both Indian miniature paintings and Jewish and Christian illuminated manuscripts.
The exhibit will be on view at the Henry S. Miller Judaica Research Room on the 4th floor of the Walsh Family Library, Monday-Friday, 10AM-5PM. A smaller satellite exhibit of Siona Benjamin’s prints is in the Quinn Library at Lincoln Center (3rd floor) whenever the library is open.
Since the fall of 2022, the Henry S. Miller Judaica Research Room has served as a space for exhibits related to contemporary Jewish art and experience. During the summer of 2024, we are showing the photographs of Eugeny Kotlyar, a scholar and artist from Kharkiv. In the fall of 2023, an exhibit of Kotlyar’s gorgeous stained glass designs for restituted synagogues in Ukraine, “The Light of the Revival,” showcased the revival of Jewish culture and re-discovery of Jewish heritage in post-independence Ukraine.
The exhibit on view this summer–“The Ukrainian Shtetl: Homecoming to Places of Strength—Photographic Travels by Eugeny Kotlyar”–features black and white photographs and photographic montages of small towns that used to be the beating heart of east European Jewish life and culture and also sites of its destruction. Now–even without the impact of the current war–desolate and seemingly forgotten, these towns seem covered with an aura of nostalgia and serenity. But Kotlyar breaks that aura of nostalgia and serenity with subtle pointers: the elderly minyan shows a group of elderly Jewish men, faint remainders of the once thriving towns; and two portraits of a local man and a woman are titled “Keepers of secrets.”
In contemporary eastern Europe–Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, and other places–cemeteries and abandoned synagogues are the entry point to Jewish life, a poignant echo of the fact that a Jewish cemetery is sometimes called in Hebrew beit hayim (a house of life). Kotlyar’s exhibit captures that exquisitely. The remnants of Jewish cemeteries are both a reminder of the vibrant past and of the loss in death, abandonment, and destruction. Kotlyar’s photos succeed in capturing both aspects of Ukraine’s Jewish past. Because the lands of what is now modern Ukraine were a birthplace of Hasidism and the home of Hasidic dynasties, some Jewish cemeteries, in towns where famous zaddikim lived have not only attracted pilgrims but also new religious and communal revival. Kotlya’s collage of photos of a landscape, a memorial, an archival photo of a Jewish couple from the early twentieth century, and Kotlyar himself with his son subtly brings to life the past and the present, the memory of that past and the lived present.
Artist Statement: THE UKRAINIAN SHTETL. HOMECOMING TO PLACES OF STRENGTH: Photographic travels in former Jewish localities
By Eugeny Kotlyar
The memory of the traditional world of Jewish small towns in eastern Europe has been slowly disappearing since the beginning of the last century. The shtetl, a small town, is both a real and imagined place in Jewish history and memory. The world of the shtetl lasted for more than five centuries. It belonged to many eastern European countries, as the region’s political boundaries shifted from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to the Russian Empire and its Pale of Jewish Settlement. This world experienced the hardest shocks of wars, pogroms, evictions of Jews, and socio-political and economic upheavals and always tried to adapt to the new life. But its life was cut short first by World War I and the October Revolution, and then, ultimately, by the Holocaust.
Eugeny Kotlyar. And You Shall Tell Your Sons… My Ancestors Who Died in the Holocaust. Kamianets-Podilskyi. 1941. “Shtetl. Transgression” cycle. The second half of the nineteenth century (photo by Józef Kordysz)-1940-2011-2017-2024
After the loss of life, the stones began to disappear, the streets and traces of the past were increasingly erased, and the memory started to fade away. The former shtetl acquired different metaphysical meanings through which everyone has been finding their own source of life and strength and their own light. Vanishing and unquenchable. A light that only black and white film could truly convey. This desolation, however, is not a dumping ground for old things. It is a world still full of human warmth and deep mystical power.
Eugeny Kotlyar. Doors of the Shtetl. “The Shtetl’s Chambers” cycle. 2012.
In the 21st century, this world has also become my place of power. From my native Kharkiv in the east of the country, fate led me on unpredictable paths to western Ukraine. I first came here as a traveler more than 20 years ago. Later I brought my relatives, friends, and students to these places and organized scholarly expeditions and plenaries. Then, in March 2022, my family and I fled here, seeking refuge from Russian shelling. A year ago, these old sites brought me to their fully-developed living space, filled with holiness, prayer, and modern community life. It was already a new experience of pilgrimage to the realm of graves and the spirit of the great Hasidic tzaddikim.
Eugeny Kotlyar. Shrines of the Shtetl. “The Shtetl’s Chambers” cycle. 2012
Over the years I used a film camera, then a digital, and finally a high-quality smartphone camera. I shot greedily, afraid of missing out on anything of value. The feeling that I would be the last to capture the still-vanishing world of the shtetl became obsessive. The allure of old photographs mentally brought me back to this black-and-white world, and I clung to this style to free myself from modernity. Documentary stylization became my preference. I tried to enrich the image of the recorded subject, to poeticize it, using montages, softness or contrast, darkening of the frame and frames that refer to prints from old glass photographic plates.
For two decades, I have been tracking the changing life of the Ukrainian province. Away from the bustling civilization, time flowed differently here, slowing down and stopping. With each new trip, I rediscovered familiar places, looked for changes, and listened to the exciting silence. My thoughts took me deep into the eras when the classic shtetl breathed its full breath, and when its breath was interrupted. But even in this space of the boundless power of the winds, I continue to feel the current of life and the lightness of my own breath.
I suddenly realized that neither I nor the generations to come will be the last witnesses of the shtetl. Slowly and steadily losing its authentic appearance, this space will reveal itself to contemporaries and descendants in a new way. In the age of digitalization, virtualization, and artificial intelligence, the technologies of the future will help us not to forget the past. So, the world of the shtetl will always be accessible to direct or indirect contact. It will always remain a place of deep longing, inexplicable love, and abiding power.
Eugeny Kotlyar,Kyiv, May 4, 2024
This exhibition is made possible thanks to the generosity of a Fordham Trustee Henry S. Miller, Mr. Eugene Shvidler GBA’ 92, members of the CJS advisory board, and anonymous donors to the Center for Jewish Studies at Fordham. The Center for Jewish Studies at Fordham is grateful to Fordham University’s Walsh Family Library and especially the O’Hare Special Collections for their support. We are especially grateful to Linda Loschiavo, the Director of the Walsh Family Library, and Gabriella DiMeglio and Vivian Shen at the O’Hare Special Collection.
A new exhibit “Knife/Paint/Word” at the Henry S. Miller Judaica Research Room at Fordham’s Walsh Family Library features the work of Deborah Ugoretz, a Brooklyn-based artist, whose expressive work deals with the exploration of feminism, her concern for and fascination with the diversity of the natural world, and social issues. The exhibit is accompanied by items from the Judaica collection in the Special Collections at the Walsh library, chosen and research by two undergraduate students Hannorah Ragusa and Elizabeth Rengifo-Vega. The manuscripts and printed books on display include one from Yemen, a recent acquisition, eighteenth-century books illustrating Jewish ceremonies, and medieval manuscript facsimiles that speak to the themes of Deborah Ugoretz’s art: the blessing of the New Moon, the story of Creation, and Lilith, the mythical primeval woman, traditionally imagined to have been the first, disobedient and rebellious wife of Adam.
The exhibit opened on February 8th and will be on view until May 20, 2024. On April 7th, there will be a papercutting workshop with Deborah Ugoretz at the O’Hare Special Collections. You can learn more and sign-up here.
The Artist’s Statement
I have two loves in my artistic life: working in cut paper and painting in acrylics.
I use the first to explore my fascination with negative and positive space. Because cut paper reveals the beauty and mysteries of what has been taken away, negative space is not empty or meaningless. It exists to support what it is possible for us to see. The act of cutting away is a process that reveals the graphic form of things, and illuminates the concept of balance through structure. In the way I work, line becomes thick, morphs into the armature that holds and unifies the work.
The ancient Kabbalists believed that it was possible to find meaning in the empty spaces around and within the letters of texts. The Japanese concept of Notan views the relationship of negative and positive space as reciprocal and necessary for harmony and balance. These two world views deeply influence my work.
The simplicity, flexibility and strength of paper enables me to transform it into multi-dimensional art with a limitless range of expression. I love the challenge of solving the problems inherent in working with paper and particularly the challenges of working in three dimensions. In my piece Sanctuary, inspired by Psalm 27, I depict fear, chaos and the promise of a place of security in three-dimensional form. Part of the pleasure of creating is the discovery of materials that enable me to bring my ideas into reality. The craft of building and forming becomes a way to express ideas.
Sanctuary
In my paintings, I work to engage the viewer in a celebration of the spectrum. Color is the way that the mysterious is revealed to the world. It is rather spiritual; if white light is invisible – in the same way that the LIFE FORCE is invisible- then it is through the spectrum that that spiritual force is revealed to us. My goal is to delve into the physical, tactile nature of painting as I develop themes that express my concern and fascination with the natural world.
Much of my work is born from the written word. I take texts — poems, prayers, ancient writings — and translate them into a visual language that infuses those words with deeper meaning because visual language touches me on a richer emotional and intellectual level. My painting, The Six Days of Creation based upon the Genesis story, uses my theory of color and finishes off the painting as a comment on the ravages of disposable culture. This is how I connect texts, my interpretations and social comment through art.
Deborah Ugoretz’s Six Days of Creation displayed at the Walsh Family Library with medieval Hebrew facsimiles showing the same story in writing or in image: the Sarajevo Haggadah, the North French Miscellany, and the Kennicott Bible.
About the Artist
Deborah Ugoretz is a Brooklyn-based artist, born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She holds a B.S. in fine art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her expressive work deals with the exploration of feminism, her concern for and fascination with the diversity of the natural world, and social issues. Since 1978, Ugoretz has been a master cut paper artist and teacher. Her work was featured in the monograph In the Tradition of Our Ancestors – Papercutting (Folklife Program of the New Jersey State Council of the Arts, 2006) and the catalog of the exhibition “Slash! Paper Under the Knife,” held at the Museum of Art and Design in New York from 2009 2010. She has designed stained glass windows and synagogue art for the Russ Berrie Home for Jewish Life in Rockleigh, New Jersey, and other houses of worship. Other commissions include the Tenement Museum, University of Michigan, Jewish Theological Seminary, YIVO Institute of Jewish Research, and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
Ugoretz’s work has been exhibited at the Milwaukee Jewish Museum, the Monmouth Art Museum, the Hebrew Union College Institute of Religion Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art, The Museum of Biblical Art, the UJA Federation Gallery, and others. Ugoretz is recognized by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts as a master cut-paper artist.
The exhibit has been made possible through the generosity of Fordham’s Trustees Henry S. Miller and Eileen Sudler, Mr. Eugene Shvidler, and Anonymous donors.
