Faculty Show

Beth Krensky, Assistant Professor - Department of Art & Art History

My current work is tied to my being a mother. I continue to explore ways that art (both the process of creating art as well as the finished product) can transcend the political for the human. In particular, I am very interested in children—what happens to them, what is possible for them, and what our responsibility as adults is for them.
The work for this exhibition is based on my own and my people’s traditions, rituals and texts. I have drawn both from centuries-old traditions and objects as well as from my family’s more recent history of emigration from Russia, Austria and Hungary at the turn of the last century. My body holds a piece of the collective consciousness of the Jewish people as well as my individual and family memories.
Conceptually, the ideas of lineage, motherhood, Jewish ritual and the region marking a boundary or threshold, have informed all of the work. I have chosen different media to support conceptual choices. Bronze memorializes as well as reflects the materials used during a specific period of antiquity. Copper has been used in religious ceremonies for millennia and is considered a medium between the spirit and physical worlds. Olive wood has come from Bethlehem and represents both ancestral roots and the contested land.
Much of the work is reminiscent of ritual artifacts, both real and imagined. Many of the pieces are small enough to carry on one’s person, just as my ancestors carried a few small possessions with them as they escaped pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. The physical journeys of my ancestors have become metaphorical passages that raise questions about our contemporary location(s). On what ground do I stand and in whose house?
Women—historical, biblical and contemporary—have influenced the work. Sarah and Hagar, the Jewish matriarchs, Jewish and Muslim women that have come together to work for peace, and numerous Jewish women I have interviewed, are reflected in some of the pieces.
The idea of “re-membering,” or putting back together something, is a theme woven through some of the work. “Bridge III” can represent fragments of something disparate, or perhaps fragments that can be connected in some way to create a bridge. It is my intent that the work merely raise questions that can be contemplated and discussed, and perhaps move us across real or imagined divides to common ground.

At a time when divides between Jews and Muslims seems to be normalized, this creative work is an attempt to create a space for dialogue between the two traditions. When Gloria Anzaldua wrote about counterstance in Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza, she argued that:

[I]t is not enough to stand on the opposite river bank, shouting questions….A counterstance locks one into a duel of oppressor and oppressed; locked in mortal combat, like the cop and the criminal, both are reduced to a common denominator of violence....But it is not a way of life. At some point, on our way to a new consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between the two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on both shores at once and, at once, see through serpent and eagle eyes.” (1987, Pp. 78 - 79).

This current body of work attempts to explore Anzaldua’s idea of counterstance as well as her envisioning of a new space that moves one beyond being locked into opposition. There is a long history of the arts being used for social commentary and change. The arts have been used to comment on social conditions, suggest new ideas, and provide a free space for contemplation of something that may not already exist.