SHOUT IN THE EARS OF JERSUSLEM - ARTIST'S STATEMENT

I see my role as an artist as one of forming and transforming collected and collective memory into personal memory. I choose materials and images for their intrinsic meaning. Responding to the symbolic, essential and qualitative nature of the material - be it burlap, straw, earth or found objects - I transform materials into vessels of meaning. Each piece expresses a different chapter in the same story, forming a visual and symbolic personal narrative of family, loss of home and place, ancient text, death and rebirth, renewal, contradiction, uncertainty….As a Jewish artist, I am both rooted in and bound by these themes.

The pieces documented in this exhibition comprise three environmental artworks created in a field on the outskirts of Jerusalem during the winter and spring of 2000. Working with materials found in nature created opportunities not found in the confines of a studio. Like many artists, much of my work develops out of a process of surprise and accidental discovery. This particular environment on the edge of the city - between Kibbutz Ramat Rachel and the Arab village Sur Bahir - was a mixture of natural growth, orchards planted by the kibbutz, and urban rubble. That blend presented unexpected and evocative surfaces and objects to paint on and interact with. It limited me to the things I could find, while also creating new possibilities.

Working outdoors becomes extremely physical and it attuned me to the rhythms of this small microcosm of Jerusalem. Mixing earth into paint or arranging stones, I watched a shepherd and his herd of goats walk over my ring of branches without disturbing a single twig. I observed the apple trees burst into flower as I turned a pile of dead, burnt trees into an artifact of a now destroyed past. With these random elements, I created metaphors of renewal and belonging.

The Silent Ring contains a painting on wooden planks set in a circle of branches and other found objects. The central motif is a lyrical dance of three hares with three shared ears. This image is a detail derived from an exquisitely painted ceiling in a now destroyed wooden synagogue in Poland. These hares become a remnant, a fragment, circling tricksters-- but ultimately fragile and temporary. Yet their interconnected forms, with prominent ears, perhaps remind us to listen?

The central piece of this installation is a painting on a large slab of concrete found in this field. This slab set itself up as a painting with flat, metal-framed areas, multiple sections, and an irregular, inspiring surface. A convoluted suit of amour is represented - crashing, clanging and protective. From this "guardian of memory" emerges a deer, an image which has long occupied my work. Drawing inspiration from, the name of my great-grandfather Hershel, which means "deer" in Yiddish, I have taken over time the deer as a personal totem. A line from the Book of Jeremiah 2:2 became the title of this piece and in turn this exhibition: "Shout in the Ears of Jerusalem." This is God's commandment to Jeremiah not long before the destruction of Solomon's Temple. It was, and still is, a call to listen.

In the installation entitled Parochet, a rusty metal piece of shelving is inscribed with an image from the parochet (Torah ark curtain) of the Great Synagogue of Lutsk, where my father was born. I came across an old black and white photo of the ornate aron hakodesh (Torah ark) of this synagogue, covered by this parochet. It was a revelation when I saw this exact parochet in an exhibition of treasures collected in the Pale of Settlement in 1912 by the great ethnographer Sh. Ansky. The source of this parochet was unknown; but from this old photograph, I knew it was from Lutsk. I recreated it in this field and juxtaposed it with a sculpted deer head amidst the intertwined, antler-like branches of a tree.

Taking all this stuff from Jewish history, family history, and my history, and investing it in this field, I struggled to find form and order. This Jerusalem field is not an arbitrary place. By working the landscape, I forged a connection, and found a relationship in time and space.

- Benny Ferdman

Rosh Hashanah 2007