My Body is Political

This was my submission to a Jewish-Muslim Interfaith art and music dialogue event. It's hard to describe what the event was exactly supposed to be like, but Jews and Muslims get together and watch short films about being Jewish or Muslim, listen to some music inspired by common heritage, have some conversations, etc. This time they added an art show, so I submitted, the prompt was "your Jewish or Muslim identity," basically.

So I made this mandala (I am into mandalas lately, not interpreting them but making them, after researching mandalas for a class assignment a few weeks ago). It took me a couple of days, it's pretty large and I made it with only pen and filled in some of the spaces with marker because that would have been crazy to fill it in with pen - usually when I make smaller mandalas like this I only use pen. I wrote something about mandalas being the universal symbol of wholeness and completion, and how mine is growing and being shaped by experience.

I then put it on display at the interfaith dialogue with markers and a sign that encouraged people to participate in my Jewish identity, since I am influenced by people I meet and my experiences.

It was interesting to watch people decide whether or not to make a mark.


But then some people got really into it. There was a pretty steady stream of people adding to my work throughout the evening.


This girl spent the most time working on it, she was very serious about it.


If you step back and look at it, it really is quite beautiful. This is what it looked like at the end of the night (or, rather, when I decided to leave, I just couldn't stay any longer).


But then, look closer:


"FREE GAZA."

That person may as well have written "KIKE" on it.

So much for peaceful interfaith dialogue.

Someone responded to it on my work by writing "Love" and "Tolerance" on different areas. Someone else then saw my work as a political forum and made some references to gay rights.

And the thing that really gets me is that they put it inside a hamsa, which is a shared symbol by many middle eastern cultures including Judaism and Islam, although I wonder if the person who wrote that knew that.

It just goes to show you that art brings out the truth. Nobody would have said that out loud at the dialogue, but it was there, and it came out the instant someone was allowed to make art about it. This was the first example of someone writing text on my piece, the first time someone felt their own individuality was more important than contributing to my identity, and the first person to make a violent statement against me - on my own art.

This is how I am seen. My very presence is political. I am Jewish, therefore I am an oppressor, therefore I am racist, therefore I have some kind of power. It was a personal message to me as a Jew. I get that it was a public stunt because the ability to write was there, but this was a personal artwork about me and my Jewish identity. Not about someone else's political agenda.

I tried to go home and do other work but I just couldn't. So I made some response art (yay art therapy grad student nerd). I worked for 20 minutes while listening to music and then wrote about it:

Betrayed
I bared myself, made vulnerable
Stabbed
So quickly
So easily
So thoughtlessly.
Using me for your own purpose.
It was never about our relationship, only quick satisfaction for you.
You didn't even know me and felt free to use me.
Your presence is a sham.
Go home.
I don't have to justify myself to you,
Nameless viewer.
No wonder things are the way they are.

We're Mentally Ill, Not Stupid!!!

UGH. I don't know where else to put this rant so it's going in my art blog, here.

I am an intern at a site for adults recovering from severe mental illness (for example, schizophrenia). Recovering means they are currently undergoing several forms of therapy, including talk therapy and psychopharmacological (is that a word?) therapy, as well as seeing a social worker who helps them to find jobs and stable housing. Some also live in group homes which are also overseen by the organization. These clients are not called clients, they are members of a community, because they actually work hand-in-hand with staff on many levels to run the organization. Participation is mostly voluntary, although they do sign a contract when becoming members to participate at a specified level.

Anyway. These are adults who are working at becoming part of "normal" society again, after maybe having been isolated for a period of time due to their illness. In a way it's not much different than someone with a physical illness like cancer. When you see a person in remission, you might not know they had cancer, like you might not know that someone from our organization is struggling with a mental illness. And just because someone is in remission from cancer doesn't mean they're stupid, right?

It's so frustrating! I know these people personally and like them very much already. We hang out, make art, and learn about each other. We relate as people and as therapy participators.

And then we go on trips where the docent of the art gallery or the art studio facilitator treats them like children. I am not observing this, I am feeling it because I am also being treated as a child, since I am walking with and talking to the people in the group it is assumed I must also be mentally ill and therefore stupid.

Many of the members of this organization were fully functioning members of society until that moment that it happened: a psychotic break, a major depressive episode, a mania with psychotic features, or whatever you can find recorded in their charts. Some people went traveling, studied abroad, when to art school, were lawyers, got good grades in high school, you name it. Something happened and it all fell apart. They are still those people, but now they are dealing with something that makes doing everything they used to do so much harder. And medications just add another layer of complication to that - it can stop symptoms but make someone gain weight, feel tired all the time, or even make them twitch in ways that freak people out. But they are still those people they were!

I understand that some people with mental illness also have cognitive disabilities or other things that might make their mental processing not move quite as quickly as some others. I don't know. But what I do know is, beginning with the assumption that someone who is mentally ill can't understand you or can't handle something without asking them and seeing how they respond is insulting and maybe lazy :(

(OK remember I am new at this and not jaded yet)

Blah. It makes me so mad. I don't know what to do about it. I just feel helpless and embarrassed - when the docent says something like "have you ever heard of the Renaissance?" I just feel so horrible.

Class has started

I love my classes this semester! At least they seem really great right now. :D Not much energy to write about it, just wanted to say YAY.

Pomegranates ... Us & Them, Puns, & Fear

There are a few themes with the pomegranates. I don't know how coherently I will be able to write about them because I am only beginning to explore them now with these pieces.

#1: The pun of pomegranate and grenade. It turns a beautiful, even happy image into something much darker. פיגוע הרימון = pomegranate explosion/attack or grenade explosion/attack. Pomegranate #3 has that text, but it showed up in other prints I did with pomegranates that were unfinished.

#2: I started working on these pieces after the most recent war in Israel broke out, and during that time there were also many anti-semitic attacks around the world, including 4 (at least four?) attacks on synagogues in my area - one was only a few blocks from me. Graffiti with swastikas, molotov cocktails, etc. At anti-Israel rallies there were signs that said "Kill all the Jews." This is terrifying to me. Pomegranate #2 has the text that says "we are not afraid," which is a copy of the text from a sign in Sderot that my friend photographed when she went there to volunteer a couple of weeks ago. Making this was kind of therapeutic for me, having to say that We are NOT afraid not only is a way of changing my own thinking and therefore feelings, but saying "we" instead of "I" makes me part of a group. I am not alone. We are all feeling this right now.

#3: Us & Them ... the images, without knowing Hebrew or understanding the pun of the pomegranates, make no sense. They look happy or pretty or I don't know. When I explained the meaning behind the things I had made in the critique, I think people were shocked. The teachers - I think - maybe felt betrayed by my images, because they couldn't figure out what I was making until I explained it. They gave me suggestions for ways to communicate my ideas to a wider audience, but part of the way I made it (bright colors, bubble letters, etc) was to emphasize the us and them. They won't get it. They don't know what it's like to be a Jew (or a Jew like me, if you are offended by my generalization). I think they were shocked just as much at the imagery meaning something darker as they were to hear about the synagogue attacks in our city.

I think I will continue to work on this, even though there is a somewhat calming down in Israel right now.

This was like me practicing my own art therapy. For some reason, the change in scale really brought out personal artwork. I find a lot of times my work is removed from me, has nothing to do with anything I feel and do, is something funny or amusing or about some technique that I find interesting. But having to do something so large which requires so much work, I felt that I could only possibly sustain attention for something that big would be to tap into something I really care about.

Pomegranate Piece #5

I will post the pomegranate pieces in their separate entries and then reference them in one entry when I explain them.

Processes:
- purchased cotton fabric
- shibori tied and partial immersion dyed (let the dye creep up the shirobi overnight)
- dye printed purple pomegranate seed repeat
- monoprint with dye pomegranates

Pomegranate Piece #4

I will post the pomegranate pieces in their separate entries and then reference them in one entry when I explain them.

Processes:
- purchased white wrinkly/gauzy cotton
- monoprint with dye three large pomegranates
- dye printed yellow pomegranate seed repeat
- dye printed purple pomegranate repeat
- dye printed second color for pomegranate repeat

Pomegranate Piece #3

I will post the pomegranate pieces in their separate entries and then reference them in one entry when I explain them.

Processes:
- purchased cotton fabric
- printed purple pomegranate seed repeat
- dye printed red pomegranate paper stencil print with paper resist
- shadow printed leftover image on screen on the top of the fabric
- painted with dye to fill in images and create text

Pomegranate Piece #2

I will post the pomegranate pieces in their separate entries and then reference them in one entry when I explain them.

Processes:
- purchased pink cotton fabric
- thiox the text (thiox is like bleach but not as corrosive)
- dye printed purple pomegranate seed repeat
- dye printed yellow pomegranate explosion print
- heat pressed dispersion dye blue flame-y things

Pomegranate Piece #1

I will post the pomegranate pieces in their separate entries and then reference them in one entry when I explain them.

This piece was part of the "group book" project, and was cut into 18 squares and distributed among the class.

Processes:
- ink printed pomegranate seed repeat in yellow
- ink printed pomegranate red background
- ink printed pomegranate purple repeat (over red backgrounds)
- ink printed actual pomegranate (painted a halved pomegranate and pressed onto the fabric)

פיגוע הרימון

For some reason I have become kind of preoccupied with the pun of "pomegranate" and "grenade" in Hebrew. I think it is because of the war and my reactions to it - not just this war, but my experience in 2006 when I was in Israel during the Second Lebanon War, the first time I have ever been in a country at war (with a front on the country's soil, I guess).

Will post pictures later.