By Jenni Person, Artistic Director, The Open Tent
Seder As Art 2010 – What a wonderful gallery walk night – lucky us! Lots of people came out after two frozen/rained out months of gallery walks.
All the artists involved took risks. Michael Pertnoy’s video installation on a Darfuri exile going from Egypt to Israel challenged by stepping out of Jewish experience as the Maggid (the telling part of the seder), to parallel and investigate Jewish experience…as well as responsibility – with the central theme being that we have to remember that we were once slaves in Egypt and therefore not supposed to allow oppression to exist anywhere.
Photographer Tomas Loewy stepped away from his original plan to include prints and opted for what he called a visual installation, a looped slideshow of hundreds of appropriated images of all things Passover – from kids books to ritual items through time, to propaganda, and appropriated text applied to the wall like a frame to the slideshow with questions and research about Passover. The piece was called What Is The Haggadah Anyway? And Loewy said his seder element was the Haggadah – but it elicited thoughts about the Four Questions. Traditionally its role is as a big deal for the youngest – and all the depth and profound meaning and pedagogy behind that. But in fact it is the keystone of the Seder – it’s all about asking questions, with ”why is this night different from all other nights?”sSimply being the tip of the iceberg. I had a theatre teacher in college who used to always ask that question – jokingly referring to Passover, but referring to why we were on stage or why the audience was at the theatre that night, etc. It’s definitely something I still measure by in all my work.
Deb Sherman’s theatre piece was humorous and engaging. She created Exodus Abridged suggesting something antithetical to traditional seders that can go all night. What are you left with when you shorthand it?
Layered literally as expertly executed collage and mixed media , Toby Needler’s piece was incredible.– folding in images and language. Images of plagues from the Sarajevo Haggadah (which itself survived such plagues as the Inquisition and the Holocaust) make up a seder plate which is surrounded by contemporary challenges – or plagues. The idea of plagues and a plagued artifact making up the seder plate itself somewhat begs the question of why would you want plagues so close, in fact holding, that which you eat? There is a superstition among some Jews that teaches that it is very important not to lick the wine off your finger after using it to make drops of wine (representing blood) for each plague or you will eat the plagues. This reminds me of that.
Conceptual artist Stuart Sheldon’s piece was a joy. Creating a surface from about 20 matzah boxes, he framed a giant egg in celebration of the unanswered, ubiquitous egg.
The egg is the only thing on the seder plate that is not explained or even discussed in the Haggadah – leaving it to be pondered freeform – even the pondering of whether or not to ponder. It is said that it’s about spring and renewal, pagan remnants that also make it central in Easter, the cycle of life, round like the world, and then there are those who pass on the meaning
