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Inquiry 01
Inquiry 01: Chicago Jewish Artists Fellowship 2017 – 2018
Chicago Jewish Artists Fellowship Dr. Dean P. Bell
Provost Vice President, and Professor of Jewish History, Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership
May 23 – August 12, 2018, Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership
This exhibition presents works by nine artists, participants in Spertus Institute’s first Chicago Jewish Artists Fellowship. Throughout the last year, the artists conducted individual and collective research into their Jewish identity and artistic practice. Exhibition Programs W EDN E SDAY, M AY 2 3 , 2 018 A T 5 : 3 0 - 8 : 0 0 P. M .
Opening Reception and Giveaway Performance by Nelly Agassi
S U N DAY, J U N E 10 , 2 018 A T 3 : 0 0 P. M .
Gallery talk with fellows Nelly Agassi, Dianna Frid, Matthew Girson, Roni Packer, and Rana Siegel.
S U N DAY, J U LY 15 , 2 018 A T 3 : 0 0 P. M .
Gallery talk with fellows Leslie Baum, Iris Bernblum, Jesse Malmed, and Geof Oppenheimer.
T H U R SDAY, J U LY 2 6 , 2 018 A T 6 : 0 0 P. M .
Group performance reflecting on the successes and failures of Democracy, organized by Matthew Girson. All events are free and they are located at Spertus Institute, 610 S. Michigan Ave Chicago, IL 60605.
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Jewish arts are central to advancing Jewish learning, engagement, and identity. Art has the incredible power to make meaning and spark personal connection. Jewish arts can engender curiosity, inspire a deep emotional or spiritual response, and be an important avenue to greater connection with Jewish life, culture, and community, particularly for those who may not otherwise feel comfortable with Jewish institutions or conventional Jewish labels or practices. Among the many important studies that have demonstrated this, the oftcited Pew Research Center’s study, A Portrait of Jewish Americans, indicates that arts encounters provide a low-barrier, effective way to stimulate deep, personal understanding of Jewish ideas. Likewise, Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership has found similar results in our own research on adults in the Chicago metropolitan area. We found that programs involving the arts are among the most sought after and significant Jewish educational experiences. At Spertus Institute, we believe that vibrant Jewish communities are learning communities. Jewish learning at Spertus, therefore, takes many different forms—from graduate degree programs in Jewish Studies, Jewish Education, and Jewish Professional Studies to certificates, public programs, and exhibitions that draw from our extensive collections of books, maps, archival materials, material culture, and visual arts. To ensure that Jewish arts and culture thrive in Chicago and remain an integral part of the Jewish experience, Spertus works closely with talented Chicago Jewish artists to engage with these collections, study Jewish texts and history, and create a vibrant Jewish artists’ network, all in an effort to integrate
programming across the Institute and introduce Jewish artists and the public through thoughtful dialogue and creative processes. To address these goals, and building upon our experiences as a key participant in the Midwest Jewish Artists Lab, Spertus designed The Chicago Jewish Artists Fellowship (CJAF) program. Co-directed by Spertus Curator of Collections and Exhibitions Ionit Behar, and curator, writer, and educator Ruslana Lichtzier, this program provides Chicago-based Jewish artists the opportunity to learn from leading scholars, visit other artists’ studios, and work closely with objects from Spertus Institute’s collections. Fellows regularly engage and collaborate with each other, exploring topics from the complexities of Jewish heritage to how Jewish ethics and rituals intersect with contemporary politics, resulting in a group exhibition, featured in Spertus Institute’s Ground Level Arts Lab. The first cohort of Fellows (for the 2017-2018 academic year) includes nine artists: Nelly Agassi, Leslie Baum, Iris Bernblum, Dianna Frid, Matthew Girson, Jesse Malmed, Geof Oppenheimer, Roni Packer, and Rana Siegel. The selected artists have exhibited and presented in prestigious venues nationally and around the world, and many teach art classes at Chicago universities. They work in a range of mediums, including film, photography, performance, drawing, painting, and sculpture. We are delighted to present their work to you through the exhibition and this publication. ▯
Inquiry 01 Ionit Behar and Ruslana Lichtzier
Co-directors, Chicago Jewish Artists Fellowship, Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership
Being Jewish, like most identities, has no one thing to which one can point to, no definitive appearance, no single definition. If we see this identity as an evolving and multi-faceted construct, one is bound to face with more questions and uncertainties than fixed answers. Spertus Institute’s Chicago Jewish Artists Fellowship was structured around this understanding. As the co-directors of this exciting fellowship, our main goal has been to foster these questions while facilitating organic inquiries. Everything that happened throughout the yearlong process was driven by the questions of the participating artists. From September 2017 until May 2018, the program was structured around monthly meetings at Spertus Institute and group studio visits with the artists in the first Chicago cohort: Nelly Agassi, Leslie Baum, Iris Bernblum, Dianna Frid, Matthew Girson, Jesse Malmed, Geof Oppenheimer, Roni Packer, and Rana Siegel. Being in different stages in their careers, working in different mediums, and coming from different backgrounds, the artists had in common one main thing: they were interested in investigating their Jewish identities with a group of colleagues, in an environment designed for camaraderie, self-reflection, and study. Acknowledging the artists’ statuses as established practitioners, we constructed a horizontal pedagogical frame where the learning processes came from the various parties actively participating in the fellowship. The artists brought individual interests which were clarified through several face-to-face discussions with us. After outlining the desired area of research, we sought a specialist—a professor or professional in the area—to push the
artists’ curiosity further. Together, they discussed the subject matter and prepared one of the sessions for the whole group. The topics and the ways they were presented varied greatly. Text-based sessions focused on the Kabbalistic meaning of the Havdalah ceremony, the concepts of vulnerability and resilience as tools to reconsider Jewish history, the Jewish concept of Hell, Medieval Jewish poetry, and concepts of mother tongue and migration via English translations of contemporary Israeli poets. During hands-on workshops, we cooked food, painted in the outdoors, and read testimonies of survivors of various forms of oppression. Collaborative, experimental sessions included the activation of group free association, meditation, and psychoanalytic therapy. We also conducted group studio visits that were tremendously enriching. The visits allowed everyone to see each other’s work in spaces that were comfortable for discussion, critique, and feedback. With each meeting and each studio visit, the artists grew closer to each other, forming an affectionate and caring community. This year we also designed a salon event: an intimate dinner at Spertus Institute with the fellows, their guests, and friends of Spertus. The artists were able to share their diverse intellectual and artistic journeys, spreading the work they were doing with a wider community, connecting new people to each other. The program concludes with this group exhibition, titled Inquiry 01. We conceived this exhibition at Spertus as a public expression of the fellowship, taking the opportunity to share some of the artists’ intellectual inquiries and artistic explorations that occurred
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throughout the year. The exhibition has no overarching curatorial theme that unifies or makes this group coherent. Rather, it is an honest presentation of what the fellowship was and who the fellows are. The artworks in the exhibition are an accurate reflection of what the fellowship looked like, at times the viewer may find points of connection between different works, at others, distancing gestures are visible, and then again, new points of connection may appear. For the exhibition, the fellows explored the Spertus collection, a valuable and diverse collection and an archive of Jewish material culture, but also in some ways for each individual artists, a cabinet of curiosities. The objects from the collection presented in the exhibition are to be seen in connection to the artists’ projects. These objects range from amulets and jewelry to a Jewish calendar, from a musical love letter to playful posters and postcards, from a woman writer’s small book of poetry to a tiny yellow monkey rescued from a child’s Noah’s Ark.
We hope that both the exhibition and publication serve as witnesses to the incredible, fruitful, and rewarding journey that this fellowship has been; a process that has resulted in a new heterogeneous community, rooted in intellectual curiosity, personal investment, and shared material sensibility. We are grateful to Spertus Institute, especially to Dr. Dean P. Bell, for believing in this project and giving us the liberty to create a space that didn’t exist before. Of course, this would not have been possible without the nine artists themselves. Each and every one: Nelly, Leslie, Iris, Dianna, Matthew, Jesse, Geof, Roni, and Rana. Their support, interest, and cooperation made this experience unique and encouraging. We are looking forward to continuing this program in the years to come, to keep inquiring collectively, producing more questions than answers. ▯
Fellows Session All sessions happened at Spertus Institute unless otherwise noted.
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Dean P. Bell Dr. Dean P. Bell is Provost, Vice President, and Professor of History at Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership. Bell explored concepts of vulnerability and resilience and their value in engaging Jewish texts and reconsidering the ways that we think about and present Jewish history.
Jesse Malmed w/ Jill Spielfogel Jill Spielfogel is a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration. She has been a social worker for eleven years, and has practiced meditation for more than fifteen years. Jill Spielfogel and Jesse Malmed led a mindful investigation of the Jewish Buddhists paths and identity formations.
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Roni Packer w/ Ido Bar-El Ido Bar-El is an Israeli painter. He is a lecturer of art at Ramat HaSharon College and Beit Berl College, and a Senior Lecturer and Head of the Art Department at Bezalel. Bar-El gave a lecture about his path as an Israeli painter, where he explored his ongoing intersectional interests of material investigations and political commitment. Roni Packer then cooked hummus with the group, while discussing cuisine heritages, Israel, and the history of violence in the region.
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Iris Bernblum with Suzanne Rosenfeld Suzanne Rosenfeld is trained medical doctor, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst. Iris Bernblum and Rosenfeld led a discursive session around Freud and the psychoanalytic concept of “free association.”
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Nelly Agassi w/ Inbar Greenfeld-Tairy Inbar Greenfeld-Tairy is a Clinical Psychologist Specialist. She discussed the state of immigration from the psychological perspective while contemplating her own biographical story. Then Nelly Agassi and Inbar Greenfeld-Tairy had a public quasi therapy session where they uncovered notions of home in relation to immigration.
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Leslie Baum w/ David Shyovitz David Shyovitz is an Associate Professor in Northwestern’s History Department, and at the Crown Center for Jewish and Israel Studies. Shyovitz led a revelatory text-based exploration of the Kabbalistic meaning of the Havdalah, and Shabbat more generally.
Matthew Girson w/ Nathanaël Nathanaël is an author and faculty member at SAIC and Northwestern University. Nathanaël led an encounter with Paul Celan’s Meridian Speech and Maurice Blanchot’s Gaze of Orpheus, through an excerpt of the film Ningen no j ken (The Human Condition) by Kobayashi Masaki.
Session held at Rana Siegel’s apartment and studio
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Session held at the Garfield Park Conservatory
Nelly Agassi w/ Itamar Francez Itamar Francez is an Assistant Professor in University of Chicago’s Department of Linguistics. Nelly Agassi and Itamar Francez discussed the experience of diaspora, senses of home, and mother tongues. Francez shared his own translations of Avot Yeshurun, Irena Klepfisz, and Aram Saroyan, among others. Leslie Baum led a plein air watercolor drawing workshop, inspired by her session with David Shyovitz where she explored communal drawing as an artistic practice of Shabbat, a sanctuary in time.
Matthew Girson then led a group exploration into the words of people who have survived various forms of oppression in a performance of his ongoing project, Murmur of Democracy.
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Dianna Frid w/ David Shyovitz David Shyovitz led a text-based session on Medieval Jewish poetry via Abraham Abulafia. Discussing the space between text and textile, matter and meaning, and symbolism versus the unknowable. Dianna Frid then led a group reading of Peter Cole’s “The Ghazal of What He Sees.” Geof Oppenheimer with Dov Weiss Dov Weiss is an Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of Religion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Weiss led a text-based session on his current research on the surprising notion of hell in Judaism.
Rana Siegel w/ Dylan Maysick and Rachel Ellison Dylan Maysick and Rachel Ellison are founders of Diaspora Dinners, a Chicagobased pop-up dinner series that explores the food and history of the Jewish Diaspora. Rana Siegel, Dylan Maysick, and Rachel Ellison cooked food while discussing overlooked Jewish cuisines that are on the verge of disappearance. While cooking, eating, and drinking, the group discussed the importance of tradition in relation to ritualistic domestic and communal practices, and how food allows us to remember who we are, where we come from, and with whom we prefer to share our lives.
Nelly Agassi
Leslie Baum
works in performance, installation, video, textile, and paper. In her work, she explores concepts relating to intimacy within public space and the body in relation to architecture. She received the Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation for Israeli Art Prize and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art Award for artistic encouragement from the Israel Ministry of Science, Culture and Sport. Agassi has shown her work extensively throughout the world, at sites including the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Doritto Rovescio at the Milan Triennial, Poor Farm project in Wisconsin; and at the Tate Modern in London. Agassi received her MA in mixed media from Chelsea College of Art and Design, London.
has shown her work nationally and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include Night brings day/day brings night at Heaven Gallery in Chicago, Here Comes the Rainbow at the College of DuPage’s Cleve Carney Gallery, and Excuse Me If I Get Too Deep at Geary Contemporary in New York. Recent group shows include Waterworld at Glass Curtain Gallery and Ohne Titel at 65GRAND, both in Chicago. Her animated short, Megillat Breakdown— made with Frederick Wells and based on the Book of Esther—was included in a series by the Wisconsin Union Directorate Film Committee. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Elmhurst Art Museum and has been reviewed in Artforum and Art in America.
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Iris Bernblum
Dianna Frid
is a cross-disciplinary artist. Using video, photography, drawing, and sculpture, she explores ideas around tension and release, power and play, fantasy and escape. Her work plays with the boundaries between what is considered normal and abnormal, as well as carefully and quietly subverting the viewer. In Chicago, Bernblum has shown at Aspect/Ratio Gallery, The Donnelly Foundation, Terrain Exhibitions, and Weinberg/Newton Gallery. She has exhibited at Artist’s Space and The Elizabeth Foundation in New York, The Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, and Terrain Exhibitions in Denmark. She earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and MFA from Columbia University, New York. She is represented by Aspect/Ratio Gallery, Chicago.
is an artist working at the intersection of text and textile. Her sculptures, installations, artist’s books, and mixed-media works have been shown nationally and internationally. Articles and reviews on her work have appeared in publications including Bomb, Art Forum, Art in America, the Chicago Tribune, New City, Neue Luzerner Zeitung, Hyperallergic, Letras Libres, and Sculpture. Frid was born in Mexico City where she lived as a child until her family immigrated to Canada. She currently lives in Chicago and is an Associate Professor in the Art Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
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Matthew Girson
Jesse Malmed
is an artist, writer, curator, and professor. He is primarily a painter but he also works in photography and video. His artwork has been exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally. His ongoing project The Murmur of Democracy explores democratic exchange as an artistic medium. He is currently developing a project called Jackson’s Desk: A Monument to the Successes of Democracy and a Memorial for its Failures, scheduled to open in 2010 at the Robert H. Jackson Center in Jamestown, New York. On the faculty at DePaul University, he teaches about painting, drawing, and contemporary art. Girson received his BFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
is an artist and curator whose work in moving images, performance, text, and occasional objects has been exhibited widely. Venues include the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Roots and Culture, the Chicago Cultural Center, D Gallery, Cinema Contra, Echo Park Film Center, and the University of Chicago Film Studies Center. He programs at the Nightingale Cinema and ACRE TV, and created Trunk Show with Raven Falquez Munsell, a mobile exhibition space of artists’ bumper stickers. He was named a “2014 Breakout Artist” by Newcity and has attended numerous residencies including ACRE, Ox-Bow, Summer Forum, and Lazuli. A native of Santa Fe, he earned his BA from Bard College and MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
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Geof Oppenheimer
Roni Packer
explores questions of civic value and the ways in which political and social structures are encoded in images and objects. Trained as a sculptor, he works across multiple mediums including stage set, video production, and photography. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art in Evanston, MoMA PS1 in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, SITE Santa Fe, The Aspen Art Museum, and the Athens Biennale. His work has been covered by Art in America, The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, and The New Yorker. He received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and MFA from the University of California, Berkeley.
is a colorist. With color, she traces the relations between painting, memory, and space. Born and raised in Tel Aviv, Packer completed her BFA as well as a BA in Humanities in Israel and recently received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Currently, she is a BOLT resident at the Chicago Artist Coalition. Her work has been shown in the United States and Israel in galleries including Heaven Gallery, Gallery 400, Roots and Culture, and Triumph Chicago, as well as Benyamini House and Mani House in Tel Aviv, and the Open Museum in Tel Hai, Israel.
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Rana Siegel is an artist with both a visual and food-based practice. Her visual work is rooted in a tactile language of form making, an approach that results in orchestrations and configurations linked to time and place. Her food project, Go Feed Yourself, focuses on the critique, community, and joy linked to all things food related. In 2008, she co-founded Spoke, an artist-run studio/ project space in Chicago’s West Loop. She currently works at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as the Senior Administrative Director for five academic departments. She received her BFA in Crafts from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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Image captions
top: fellows’ work, bottom: Spertus collection object. More information about the Spertus collection objects is available online at collection.spertus.edu 6
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elly Agassi, HOMESEEK, N 2018, design for keychain edition
ianna Frid, Estructura D del Texto, 2015, canvas, linen embroidery floss, aluminum, adhesives, unique book, closed: 12.5" × 9.5" × 2", open 12.25" × 17.75" —
Geof Oppenheimer, The morally ambiguous precedent of abstraction, police press conference Chicago Illinois 2008, 2007 – 2008, chromogenic color print, 72" × 53"
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edding Ring, Italy, W 20th century, Silver, 1 3⁄4″ × 5⁄8″;15⁄16″ (diameter). Gift of Milton Horn. Spertus Institute, Chicago. Obj. ID: 88.4.
7 Leslie Baum, night brings day / day brings night: c.g , s.w., 2017, oil and acrylic on canvas, 20" × 16" — Omer Calendar, Palestine, late 19th, paper, wood, paint, 10 13⁄1 6″ × 9 15⁄16″. Gift of Mrs. Gertrude J. Schiff. Spertus Institute, Chicago. Obj. ID: 94.104.
8 I ris Bernblum, Try, 2018, tempera, makeup and pencil on wall, 8' × 4'
— Adolf Muhlmann, Love Letter Written in Musical Code, ca. 1890–1910, paper, ink, pencil, 6 15⁄1 6″ × 9″. Gift of Mrs. Zerline Muhlman Metzger. Spertus Institute, Chicago. Obj. ID: 71.9.7.
amea and Kofya, Salonica, K early 20th century, velvet, cotton, metallic thread, 3.9″ × 4.2″ × 0.19″ and 3.9″ × 4″ × 0.15″. Gift of Georgette Grosz Spertus from the Maurice Spertus Collection. Spertus Institute, Chicago. Obj. ID: 72.1.54 and 72.1.55.
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atthew Girson, Kollwitz, M 2018, oil on paper, image: 21" × 9", paper: 18" × 24" —
Rana Siegel, Go Feed Yourself, Episode 9: How Not to Part a Chicken, 2017, video still —
ocheved Bat-Miriam, Y Shirim La-Ghetto (Poems for the Ghetto), 1946. From the rare book collection at the Asher Library at Spertus Institute, Chicago.
oni Packer, Untitled R (monkey), 2018, bubble wrap and fluid acrylic, 12' × 48" — nknown Artist, Monkey from U Noah’s Ark, Germany,19th Century, wood, paint 2″ × 1″. Spertus Institute, Chicago. Obj. ID: 2006.690.2.
lphonse Levy, Bloch A Publishing Company, New York, ca. 1900 –1930, 5 1⁄2″ × 3 1⁄2″. Gift of Philip Goodman. Spertus Institute, Chicago. Obj. ID: 2001.1.159, 2001.1.160, 2001.1.161, 2001.1.163, 2001.1.165.
11 J esse Malmed, The Alfabet City National Fan Club Membership Card (Unused), 2018, ink on paper, 3 1⁄2" × 2" — ionel Kalish, The Yiddish L Lesson, ca. 1970, paper, ink, 27 3⁄8″ × 21 7⁄16″. Gift of Dr. Marvin and Irene Goren. Spertus Institute, Chicago. Obj. ID: 2006.561.
This publication was made on the occasion of Spertus Institute’ exhibition Inquiry 01: Chicago Jewish Artists Fellowship 2017 – 2018. Contributors: Dr. Dean P. Bell, Provost, Vice President, and Professor of Jewish History; Ionit Behar, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions and co-director of Chicago Jewish Artist Fellowship; Ruslana Lichtzier, Co-director of Chicago Jewish Artist Fellowship, Spertus Institute. Photography: Nicholas Sagan, Nelly Agassi, Leslie Baum, Iris Bernblum, Dianna Frid, Matthew Girson, Jesse Malmed, Geof Oppenheimer, Roni Packer, Rana Siegel, Ionit Behar, Ruslana Lichtzier Design: Sonnenzimmer Typography: Swift, Antique Olive, Apercu Mono | Edition of 500 | © 2018 Spertus Institute
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Spertus Institute offers dynamic learning opportunities, rooted in Jewish wisdom and culture and open to all. These opportunities are designed to enable personal growth, train future leaders, and engage individuals in exploration of Jewish life. Spertus Institute is a partner with the Jewish United Fund in serving our community. Exhibitions at Spertus Institute are made possible in part by the Harry and Sadie Lasky and Charles & M.R. Shapiro Foundations.
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