"WE MAKE THE ROAD BY WALKING"
an exhibition by artists Sama Alshaibi and Beth Krensky
Exhibition at Dinnerware Artspace, Tucson, Arizona
April 5th - April 26th 2008 (opening reception on April 5th 7-9pm)
Sponsored by "Conversations Across Religious Traditions"
Office of the President at the University of Arizona

Previously exhibited at the Mizel Museum, Denver, Colorado
October 11, 2007 - January 24, 2008

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gallery talk

Beth Krensky

 
 

Mizel Museum, Thursday Oct. 11, 2007

I stand before you as a mother. I do have other credentials, but they have simply prepared me for why and how I chose to be part of this exhibition. Tonight, and in this space, I am first and foremost a mother who created art as a prayer for what is possible for my son and the world he lives in. There is a long path that has taken me to this moment and I want to highlight just a few of the major aspects that have informed the way.

I was born in the 1960s--a time of great tumult but also of great hope and possibility for the United States. At age six I moved to Utah. I learned the meaning of being the “other” there but also the meaning of taking action to change things. Activism is part of me, and has been since I first absorbed the consciousness of my era. It has taken different forms—as a front-line activist fighting for women’s rights and tolerance (in particular, helping to research and track the far right, including interviewing the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan), and as an educator, a love I learned from my mother. I began teaching in the urban core of Boston, learning and teaching alongside young artists who taught me grace and hope in the face of extreme odds. Years later, I entered the academy to teach future community leaders and educators about equity and justice through the arts and education. I am still engaged in this work at the University of Utah and still trying to figure it out.

I have also always made art, even though it took me until I was in my mid-twenties before I called myself “artist.” I am an artist. I understand and envision my world through art. When I was a student at the Boston Museum School, I had the privilege of working with a number of activist artists and began to bridge rigorous training in sculptural formalism with conceptual work focused on social issues, mostly the Klan. In 1995, I had the great privilege of meeting Dr. George Rivera, the curator who introduced me and Sama Alshaibi 5 years ago. He and I have worked together since that time in various capacities, all with the underlying commitment to using the arts as a tool for social change. About 6 years ago, I started creating art that explicitly drew from the teachings and traditions of Judaism as they related to issues of peace and justice. During that year, I spent many months sitting in my studio, not making work, and wondering why I was not able to create. That is when I told George that if I was going to grapple with issues that involved multiple perspectives, I realized I needed to collaborate with someone that may hold another perspective. He said he knew just the person, and thus started the relationship and dialogue between me and Sama, that eventually led to this exhibition.

The title for our exhibition, we make the road by walking, comes from a line written in 1917 by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado: Se hace camino al andar, or “You can make the way as you go.” The phrase was also used as the title for a book by Paulo Freire and Myles Horton. The entire book was composed of recorded dialogues between the two activists about education and social change. They believed that the process of dialogue was an act of freedom that allowed for new, shared ideas to emerge. This is the tradition from which our collaboration arises.

On one level, this exhibition is quite simple—two women who are artists and mothers creating work. On another level, it represents the most radical (meaning root) approach to social change—changing a fundamental way of life by shifting “the other” to an “us.”

This show is happening at a time when the divide between the Jewish and Muslim communities seems to be normalized. We have created this show as an attempt to establish a dialogue. We were influenced by what the activist, artist and author Gloria Anzaldua had to say about “counterstance” in her book

Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza. She asserted that:

[I]t is not enough to stand on the opposite river bank, shouting questions….A counterstance locks one into a duel of oppressor and oppressed; locked in mortal combat, like the cop and the criminal, both are reduced to a common denominator of violence....But it is not a way of life. At some point, on our way to a new consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between the two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on both shores at once and, at once, see through serpent and eagle eyes.” (1987, Pp. 78 - 79).

This collaboration attempts to explore Anzaldua’s idea of moving beyond counterstance and envisioning a new space. In this spirit, we have dedicated the show to our children.

The exhibition has brought me home—literally and figuratively. It has helped shape the type of work I will continue to create and it has allowed me to connect with my family—my Jewish family that stretches back millennia as well as my biological ancestors.

I want to talk about a few specific pieces in the show that represent some of the broader themes within my work. I based the work conceptually on the ideas of lineage, ritual, and the space between spaces, all with an overlay of motherhood. My art is simply an attempt to contemplate, not to provide any answers for the viewers (or participants, as I prefer to think of the people who interact with the pieces). I strive to create art that transcends the political for the human and that sparks questioning and envisioning about what is possible. Much of the work is small enough to carry on one’s person. This was intentional and is reminiscent of the few objects my ancestors were able to carry with them as they fled pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe.

Within the realm of lineage, I investigated the journeys of my forbears, more specifically, my son’s forbears, and learned of the countries, years and stories of their immigration to the United States. The piece “Journey” created together with my son, is about the journey of a child, informed by the journeys of his people. It is about time and place and the conversation between past and future. My son was looking at the piece the other day and he said to me, “I take my finger and follow the footsteps and it is like time is forever moving.” How wise our children are.

Lineage, more broadly defined, is also present in “Matriarchs.” Olive wood spheres are engraved with names of Jewish matriarchs whose lives exemplified some intention of this show. As some of you know, they are in the configuration of the tree of life or sephirot, from the teachings of mystical Judaism. The tree symbol is used in this piece, and in others, as an icon of life and motherhood. The olive wood spheres are placed on salt from the Dead Sea and the wood is from olive trees that were pulled up to build the wall between Israel and Palestine.

For the pieces that are based on ritual, I researched ancient traditions that were used within Judaism for the protection of women and children. This research only informs my art, as I often imagine new rituals based on ancient knowledge. The piece “Incantation Bowls” is based on terra cotta incantation bowls that were used during the 5th through 7th centuries to protect a home and its inhabitants from evil spirits. The bowls were inscribed and buried upside down under the front door. The amulets are based on Jewish ritual and magic that has been used for centuries to praise God and to protect women and children. The amulets, and other objects, like the stones or shofars, are intended as instruments for our own rituals, real or imagined.

The idea of the “limen”—the space between spaces—is something that has interested me for decades. The limen can be a threshold, to be crossed over, or a barrier. We decide. The piece, “Bridge III” [the piece with the sticks on the ground] is the third piece in a series of work related to the idea of bridging across divides. It is intended to invoke the idea of “re-membering,” or putting something back together. The sticks can represent fragments of something disparate, or perhaps fragments that can be connected in some way to create a bridge. Wood is also used metaphorically to symbolize kindling for a fire, which represents renewal. Although the sticks refer to wood, they are of bronze, a medium I chose as a way to memorialize. [Each stick is inscribed with a name of an Israeli or Palestinian child who has been killed since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada which began on September 29, 2000. In the memory of these children, what will we decide to do with the sticks?]

“Offering,” the piece consisting of small copper gold-leafed bowls, contains earth from Israel. I am interested in the land of Israel because of ancestral roots and the contested land. The idea of contested land extends far beyond Israel and Palestine. For me, it has become a metaphor for the multiple layers of shared existence over time and place and how we choose to interact with such a layered history.

The Piece “Where Lies the Border Between Us?”—the marble houses with “Sarah” and “Hagar” engraved upon them—represents another iconic symbol that is recurring in my work—the house. These two biblical figures, the mothers of Judaism and Islam, prompt me to consider the questions: Are there physical houses, if so, where are the borders? In this time and place, in whose house do I stand? And why? And what does that mean? After spending months in dialogue with Sama, speaking with numerous Jewish women, researching Jewish and Muslim women peacemakers, and engaging in the contemplative process of creating the work, I wonder if it is perhaps time for a new house to be erected—a shared house that can exist within the limen.