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Gindi Gallery
The Abayudaya Jewish Communities of Uganda, Africa
by Peter Decherney
Exhibits run through March 22nd, 2024
Peter Decherney is a photographer, filmmaker, and historian. He is the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Term Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs the Penn Global Documentary Institute. His work on global Jewish communities includes the Discovery+ Original documentary Dreaming of Jerusalem and his forthcoming book of photographs Endless Exodus: The Jewish Experience in Ethiopia. Peter has been an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Scholar, a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, and a U.S. State Department Arts Envoy to Myanmar. In 1919, Ugandan regional ruler Semei Kakungulu broke with Christianity and founded the Abayudaya Jewish community, numbering in the thousands at its height. In the 1970s, those numbers decreased to just a few hundred after Ugandan President Idi Amin banned Jewish observance. The surviving members of the Abayudaya kept their religion alive by secretly praying in a cave in the hills near the city of Mbale. Then, in the mid 1980s, rejuvenated in part by a kibbutz, Uganda’s Jewish community began to grow again. Today, an expanding number of synagogues and schools practice and teach Conservative, Orthodox, and Reform Judaism and observe both Ashkenazi and Sephardi traditions. Most of the photographs in the exhibit were taken in the summer of 2023. They attempt to amplify the stories that members of the Abayudaya communities generously shared with the artist. Rich colors and deep shadows foreground the subjects’ energy, optimism, and pragmatism despite many hardships, and large prints both honor their embrace of Jewish culture and celebrate the diversity of global Judaism.
Spiegel Gallery & Dortort Gallery
Body Illuminated: Finding Strength in the Human Spirit
by Rivka Nehorai
Exhibits run through March 22nd, 2024
Rivka Nehorai is an abstract figurative painter. Her work grapples with change and motion, examining how we adjust and evolve from circumstance as we seek greater truth. Rivka’s disarming images - filled with scrawled lines and abstract expressionist tendencies - are infused with both painful and celebratory emotion. Originally a Midwesterner, Rivka studied painting at Rutgers University and now lives in Los Angeles. Rivka builds community as a form of her creative work. She sees intimate, communal gatherings as a revolutionary act, and has dedicated herself for the last decade to cultivating powerful communities in Brooklyn, Long Beach, and Los Angeles. Rivka’s current show, “Body, Illuminated; Finding Strength in the Human Spirit,” follows the artist through her four-year journey from the chaos of Hasidic Brooklyn to the uneasy bliss of Southern California, as she moves through a worldwide pandemic, the fog of Long Covid, and the devastating present. Throughout it all, Rivka returns continuously to the theme of the power and glory of the body, listening to how it can heal us, soaking in spiritual lessons wherever she can find them, and determined to keep dancing.
Staircase
From the Land of Miracles
by Wendy Lamm
Exhibits run through March 22nd, 2024
Wendy Sue Lamm is a two-time World Press Photo Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer. Her photographs are striking by their ability to express the duality of both objective yet profound artistic statements simultaneously. Her first book, From the Land of Miracles, published in Europe and North America, is a figurative and artistic reflection on the fragile balance of the daily lives of Israelis and Palestinians in peace and in war. Within days of its release American Photo Magazine and the Scandinavian Book Fair in Gothenburg, Sweden, selected From the Land of Miracles as one of the best books of the year. Ms. Lamm’s photographs are exhibited in numerous museums and galleries worldwide, including Stockholm Stadsmuseet, Milan’s FORMA International Center of Photography, the Louvre in Paris, and Japan’s Asahi Museum; her work is published in international publications such as The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Elle, Geo, Der Spiegel, Le Espresso, Republica, Figaro. Her portraiture is highly sought after by major artists in recording and entertainment. In 2018 her food photographs were featured in the cookbook published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Flavor Bombs: The Umami Ingredients That Make Taste Explode. After earning a BA in Humanities from the University of California at Berkeley, Ms. Lamm accepted photographic assignments for the next eight years that spanned America--from the border towns of El Paso, Texas & Juarez, Mexico, to metropolitan daily newspapers & magazines in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Subsequently, she was based in Jerusalem as a foreign correspondent/war photographer for the French wire service Agence France-Presse, and then European photo agencies. As a member of the Los Angeles Times team reporting on the 1994 earthquake in Northridge, CA her photos were part of the coverage that earned the Times a Pulitzer Prize. From 1996 to 2005 she was based in Jerusalem, Paris and Stockholm. Her reportage spanned Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. Acclaim for her work in those years includes World Press Photo Awards and the National Press Photographers Picture of the Year Awards.
"The Abayudaya Jewish Communities of Uganda, Africa" is co-sponsored by the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies at UCLA and the Penn Global Documentary Institute
Lobby
Sandra Lauterbach
Walls of tears and hope, 2015
Exhibits is ongoing
“Thread and fabrics are my paints. Instead of brushstrokes, I stitch.” With these words, contemporary textile artist Sandra Lauterbach deftly describes her work and inspires artists and appreciators alike.
When creating a piece of art Sandra searches for pieces that can share a dialogue. In the words of curator and critic Peter Frank, “Lauterbach is making a political statement with her fanciful works….. By working with materials and techniques associated with domestic life and women’s practice, Lauterbach argues for the full validation, as fine art, of women’s creative work in general…. Her work, sprightly and unpredictable, advances Lauterbach’s feminist premise rather than the other way around.”
Known for her original use of fiber and textiles and careful expression of detail, Sandra has exhibited across the globe, from Paris to Krakow to the United Kingdom. In the United States, her work has been shown at the Textile Museum at George Washington University and the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., the International Museum of Art and Science, McAllen, TX, the Whistler House Museum of Art, Lowell, MA, the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art and the Lancaster Museum of Art and History. Her work has also been published in numerous catalogues and books.
Sandra’s roots in textiles run deep. Her family was in the textile business for over 4 generations, starting in the Austrian Hungarian Empire, then Poland and finally in Los Angeles. After studying art at Pomona College, she earned a JD degree at USC Law School. She eventually left the practice of law and focused on her art. She has attended various art schools, including Otis College of Art and Design. She is an active member of both the Southern California Women’s Caucus for Art and the Los Angeles Art Association and exhibits at Gallery 825. She is a juried artist member of the Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA). She works from her studio in Los Angeles.
Artist Statement
This piece was inspired by my visit to Remuh Cemetery in Krakow, Poland, which dates back to the early 1500s. In World War II, the Nazis desecrated the cemetery. They tore down its walls, destroyed tombstones, and hauled away some gravestones to be used as paving stones. In the 1950s, restoration of the cemetery commenced. When possible, tombstones were restored. The fragments too small to be resurrected as tombstones were painstakingly cobbled together to form one of the walls around the cemetery. This wall is known as “The Wailing Wall of Krakow”.
Both of my parents lived within walking distance of Remuh Cemetery until the start of World War II. On September 1,1939---the date Hitler invaded Poland—miraculously neither of my parents were in Krakow
On my visit to Krakow, I walked from my mother’s and my father’s family homes to Krakow’s medieval town center and on to Remuh Synagogue. It was a trip through the past realizing that my parents and grandparents had very likely walked upon the same cobblestones. Upon entering Remuh Cemetery, I saw the Wailing Wall. The Wall is a poignant memorial that inspired me to make a piece of art honoring the lost, but still showing hope for the future.
I took numerous photographs of sections of the wall and then assembled different portions of the wall into one fabric montage. To honor and remember not just the names, but also the lives of those lost, I overlaid family letters, photographs, Polish passports and other wartime documents.
Bridging the past with the future, I included photographs in color of our two sons to express my hope for the future and to render the wall into a living symbol that the past is not forgotten. This a life affirming work. Just as survivors attempted to patch their lives together after the war, my hand stitching in this piece connotes to me their lost families, homes, hearths and daily lives. Each stitch connects me to my past. This wall commemorates mankind’s ongoing struggle for personal and collective dignity. It reflects the lives of some of the individuals who perished in this continuing effort.
Small Dining Room
Selected Works from the Jewish Artists Initiative
by Rose-Lynn Fisher, Ellen Freidlander, Monica Marks, and Nancy Kay Turner
Exhibit is ongoing
About JAI
Jewish Artists Initiative (JAI) is a Southern California organization committed to supporting Jewish artists and arts professionals. JAI aspires to be an agent of transformative change by organizing provocative exhibitions and thoughtful programs promoting diverse dialogue about Jewish identity and experiences. Founded in 2004, JAI remains committed to fostering Jewish culture in our community and beyond.
Mission & History
JAI was conceived by the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles in 2004. It was originally in partnership with the University of Southern California Casden Institute and the USC Roski School of Art and Design. For many years we have been under the fiscal sponsorship of the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity. Members include primarily artists, as well as curators and art historians based in Southern California. The artists go through a jurying process to be admitted as members.
We have collaborated with a great range of Southern California institutions including American Jewish University, Hebrew Union College, UCLA Hillel and USC Hillel as well as a variety of art galleries and public spaces. We have also worked and exhibited in institutions in other parts of the United States and Israel such as the Jewish Art Salon, Hebrew Union College, New York, the New York UJA and the Jerusalem Biennale.
The Dortort Center Galleries are located at Hillel at UCLA. The public is invited to view our exhibits Monday through Friday from 10:00am to 4:00pm (or at other times by special request) when school is in session.
For questions, please contact Perla Karney at 310-208-3081 x108 or [email protected]