Ghiora Aharoni | Madison Avenue by Sundaram Tagore Gallery

GHIORA AHARONI

GHIORA AHARONI In his multi-disciplinary practice, Israeli-born American artist Ghiora Aharoni explores complex dualities, from the intersection of religion and science to intertwined relationships of seemingly disparate cultures. Aharoni creates sculptures and installations, often incorporating traditional objects, sacred text or icons. By recontextualizing cultural artifacts or text and imbuing them with new meaning, Aharoni challenges the viewer to question conventional norms and entrenched social constructs. Ghiora Aharoni has exhibited extensively around the globe, including the Rubin Museum and Asia Society, New York; the Vatican Apostolic Library; Museum of Contemporary Art, London; The Jewish Museum, Amsterdam; Jewish Museum, Vienna; Museum Galleries of the Jawahar Kala Kendra (JKK) in Jaipur; Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum (formerly The Victoria & Albert Museum), Mumbai, among others. Aharoni’s work is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Morgan Library & Museum, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Musei Vaticani; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Anu Museum, Tel Aviv, among other cultural institutions worldwide. Born in 1969, Rehovot, Israel | Lives and works in New York

THE IMMANENT TRANSCENDENTAL Inspired by the biblical story of the Golden Calf, The Immanent Transcendental is a sculptural assemblage incorporating vintage and antique golden icons and religious symbols from diverse belief systems and eras. Juxtaposing these elements with vintage laboratory equipment as well as glass beakers that have been engraved with sacred text and in-filled with 23-karat gold creates a metaphorical rumination on humanity’s collective desire to experience the metaphysical and spiritual realm.

The Immanent Transcendental, 2017–2020, assemblage sculpture with laboratory tubes, flasks and beakers (some etched with Hebrew text from Exodus and the Medieval scholar Rashi’s writings, in-filled with 23-karat gold); antique glass dome; antique Torah scroll finials; bronze, brass and metal icons with tubular lights and an illuminated steel base, 70 x 45 x 38 inches/177.8 x 114.3 x 96.5 cm 5

WHAT’S IN THE ROSE? In Aharoni’s illuminated mixed-media assemblage, exhibited at Vienna’s Jewish Museum in 2017, elements of the fact-based and material world coalesce with sacred and mystical texts. Vintage glass beakers engraved with text from the Book of Genesis are fitted with silver artifacts, including traditional wrist cuffs from India, nineteenthcentury Torah finials, and antique vitarka mudra figures. The text on the central glass vessel is engraved in reverse and can only be read by looking inside—except for select text that is interspersed and forms the question “What’s in the Rose?” The question, taken from an ancient mystical text, presents the rose (an object of beauty surrounded by thorns) as an allegory of human existence: Humanity was created with the dual energies of judgment and kindness, of whose balance we must be ever-vigilant.

What’s in the Rose? 2017, assemblage sculpture with antique silver icons and cuffs from India, antique Torah finials, fabric, vintage laboratory tubes, flasks and beakers etched with text from the Book of Genesis in Hebrew, tubular lights, steel base, 45 x 24 x 22 inches/114.3 x 61 x 55.9 cm 9

THANK GOD FOR MAKING ME A WOMAN Aharoni has long explored the power of language as a tool of agency and a way to bridge perceived cultural divides. While a student at Yale, he created Hebrabic©, a combination of Hebrew and Arabic inspired by the shared etymology of the word home in both languages. Subsequently, he went on to create Hindru©, bringing together Hindi and Urdu. Aharoni employs these phrase-based meldings of languages across a range of mediums, including fabric, glass, paper and metal. For the 2020-21 Asia Society Triennial in New York, he embroidered the phrase “Thank God for Making Me a Woman” onto three antique angarkhas—a garment worn by both Hindu and Muslim men in pre-modern India. Aharoni created two framed works with Hindru©, and the third, a sculptural work, with the phrase in both Hebrabic© and Hindru©. The phrase is a modified version of the daily prayer “Thank God for Not Making Me a Woman,” traditionally recited by Orthodox Jewish men in the morning. By removing the word not from the original text, Aharoni subverts the negative connotation, transforming it into a veneration, an expression of empowerment. Aharoni has also created editions of the phrase in small and large scales in polished aluminum as freestanding sculptures and wall sculptures.

Thank God for Making Me a Woman III, 2019, assemblage sculpture with antique angarkha, hand embroidered with the Hindru© phrase (the artist’s combination of Hindi and Urdu) “Thank God for Making Me a Woman” on the exterior, and “Thank God for Making Me a Woman” in Hebrabic© (the artist’s combination of Hebrew and Arabic) on the interior, antique silver cuffs, antique silver brooch assemblage, 67 x 48 x 20 inches/170.2 x 122 x 50.8 cm 13

Thank God for Making Me a Woman I and II, 2017, antique angarkha, hand embroidered with the Hindru© phrase (the artist’s combination of Hindi and Urdu) “Thank God for Making Me a Woman”, 48 x 68 inches/122 x 172.7 cm framed 15

Thank God for Making Me a Woman (Hindru©), 2019, polished aluminum, 6.5 x 76 x 1 inches/16.5 x 193 x 2.5 cm 16

Thank God for Making Me a Woman (Hebrabic©), 2019, polished aluminum, 5.5 x 24.5 x 1 inches/14 x 62.2 x 2.5 cm 18

WHEN ALL ROADS ARE ONE In the media sculptural work When All Roads Are One, a utilitarian taximeter is gilded in 23-karat gold, transforming it into a modern-day reliquary. Inside is a video montage that merges the artist’s pilgrimages via auto-rickshaw to four of India’s most sacred sites for Buddhists, Jews, Muslims and Hindus, which he has been making for more than fifteen years. Aharoni travelled to Sanchi, where part of the Buddha’s ashes were buried in the third century BC; Mattancherry, home to the Paradesi Synagogue, built in the 1500s and still a functioning temple today; Nizamuddin Dargah in Delhi, the shrine of a thirteenth-century Sufi saint; and Varanasi, one of India’s holiest cities, where the Hindu ritual of aarti is performed on the banks of the Ganges every morning and evening. Aharoni converted his videos into black and white to blur the distinctions between day and night, rural and urban, past and present. And rather than the destination, the focus is on the journey, where cross-cultural paths become one, and the destination remains unseen. The work conveys our collective connection to a metaphysical existence, as well as to one another, as an infinite, ongoing journey. One edition was acquired by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi and another is in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

When All Roads Are One, 2017, assemblage sculpture with vintage Indian taximeter encased in 23-karat gold leaf retrofitted with two screens displaying videos filmed by the artist in Sanchi, Nizamuddin (Delhi), Varanasi and Mattancherry, India, mounted on a circular black Plexiglas platform on a cylindrical steel base with a glass dome, 55 x 12 x 12 inches/139.7 x 30.5 x 30.5 cm 21

THE ROAD TO SANCHI For his solo exhibition at the Rubin Museum (2017–18), Aharoni showed The Road to Sanchi, an ongoing series of media sculptural works that explores intercultural interconnectivity and also challenges conventional notions of time. Aharoni retrofits vintage taximeters from India with single-channel videos of his pilgrimage journeys to four of India’s most sacred sites for Buddhists, Jews, Muslims and Hindus, which he has been making for more than fifteen years. Aharoni travelled to Sanchi, where part of the Buddha’s ashes were buried in the third century BC; Mattancherry, home to the Paradesi Synagogue, built in the 1500s and still a functioning temple today; Nizamuddin Dargah in Delhi, the shrine of a thirteenth-century Sufi saint; and Varanasi, one of India’s holiest cities, where the Hindu ritual of aarti is performed on the banks of the Ganges every morning and evening. Aharoni documents the road to, though the destination remains unseen in the video, transforming it into a meditation on the wonder within any journey, the timeless nature of pilgrimage and the universal threads that unite cultures. The sculptures are displayed on steel pedestals under glass domes that reference the form of a time capsule as well as the silhouette of a stupa (a traditional Buddhist burial structure).

The Road to Sanchi, 2016, assemblage sculpture with vintage Indian taximeter retrofitted with two screens displaying videos filmed by the artist in India, mounted on a circular wooden platform on a cylindrical steel base with a glass dome, 55 x 11.6 inches/139.7 x 29.5 cm each 25

RONDOLINEAR SCULPTURES Aharoni’s Rondolinear series of minimalist abstract sculptures challenges assumptions about materials and their physical relationship to space. Aharoni, a Yale-trained designer, uses wood and plaster, traditional building materials, to fabricate sensuous elongated forms that express dualities of tension and movement, substance and mutability. Torqued into spirals, helixes and asymmetrical shapes, Aharoni’s smooth, rhythmic forms suggest calligraphic gestures on the threshold of language.

Rondolinear Sculptures, 2004–present, unique plaster and wood sculptures, dimensions vary 29

MAKE ME A TEMPLE WITHIN (THE GHAU SERIES)

Make Me a Temple Within (The Ghau Series) is a body of work employing portable shrines, carried by Buddhist monks and pilgrims on spiritual journeys, as a lens to explore the relationship between the individual and the divine. Aharoni replaced the small statue of Buddha that traditionally sits inside the ghau, visible through a small window, with a video montage he made of Buddhist monks prostrating as they circumambulate sacred sites. The film is interwoven with images of Aharoni’s sculpture Make Me a Temple in Hebrabic© (his melding of Hebrew and Arabic), ambient sound and other public devotional rituals, conveying a collective desire for spiritual expression that transcends belief systems. The title refers to a phrase translated from the Hebrew bible “Make me a temple, so I will dwell inside you,” an invocation to manifest spiritual energy within oneself.

Make Me a Temple Within (The Ghau Series), 2019, portable vintage Buddhist shrines retrofitted with screens displaying video montages created by the artist, dimensions vary 33

LUNAR CALLIGRAPHY Set against the abstracted texture of the night sky, Aharoni’s ongoing series of lunar photographs employs the full moon as a medium to create a new character-based language. Each year since 2007, Aharoni has manipulated the rising August full moon with his camera into seemingly spontaneous gestures. Just as a calligrapher modulates the speed and pressure of every stroke to imbue specific meaning, each composition transforms line into evocation, collectively forming a meditative, lyrical vernacular.

Lunar Calligraphy, 2008–present, digital print on fine-art archival paper, Small: 26 x 26 inches/66 x 66 cm Medium: 40 x 40 inches/101.6 x 101.6 cm Large: 96 x 60 inches/243.8 x 1524 cm 36

INCEPTION Translating one of the works from his Genesis Series (2009– 17) of assemblage sculptures into a photograph, Aharoni recontextualizes the sculptural form into two-dimensional imagery, as a contemplation on our perceptions of time and creation. The image is a floating glass vessel engraved with the Genesis creation text from the Torah, which begins at the center with identical text moving in opposite directions, spiraling upward and downward. The dual direction of the text, inspired by the mystical concept that, while our current existence was indeed the beginning of our creation, there were other beginnings prior to ours. It echoes the often-divergent paths of that which is logical and the divine.

Inception, 2015, digital print on fine-art archival paper, 40 x 40 inches/101.6 x 101.6 cm 43

SUNDARAM TAGORE GALLERIES We have been representing established and emerging artists from around the world since 2000. We show work that is aesthetically and intellectually rigorous, infused with humanism and art historically significant. We specialize in paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations with a strong emphasis on materiality. Our artists cross cultural and national boundaries, synthesizing Western visual language with forms, techniques and philosophies from Asia, the Subcontinent and the Middle East. We show this work alongside important work by overlooked women from the New York School. The gallery also has a robust photography program that includes some of the world’s most noted photographers.

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LONDON 4 Cromwell Place, London, SW7 2JE Opening 2021 President and curator: Sundaram Tagore Senior Director, New York: Susan McCaffrey Director, Singapore: Melanie Taylor Director, New York: Kathryn McSweeney Registrar: Julia Occhiogrosso Designer: Russell Whitehead Editorial support: Kieran Doherty

WWW.SUNDARAMTAGORE.COM Text © 2021 Sundaram Tagore Gallery Photographs © 2021 Ghiora Aharoni All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Cover: Inception, 2015, digital print on fine-art archival paper, 40 x 40 inches/101.6 x 101.6 cm