The Jerusalem Biennale pilot artist-in-residency program brings contemporary Jewish artists to Jerusalem. The first of these is Jewish Art Salon member Lenore Cohen.
“Bridging the Gap between Cultures: A Syrian Jewish Artist in Jerusalem” mentions that Cohen is in Jerusalem as the first ever artist-in-resident supported by the Jerusalem Biennale for Contemporary Jewish Art. By bridging the gap between Judaism and art, it is attempting to do what Cohen does with her proverbs. The event is part of the Biennial foundation, an international arts organization providing advocacy and thought leadership by supporting art events, like the Jerusalem Biennale, all over the world.
“We decided to dedicate the Jerusalem Biennale to a narrow field, which is called contemporary Jewish art,” Rami Ozeri, founding director of the Jerusalem Biennale, who also invited Cohen to Jerusalem, told The Media Line. “I think that it’s the only platform in the world dedicated to it – meaning the intersection of contemporary art and the Jewish world.”
Cohen takes ancient Arabic proverbs that her father used to read to her and reworks them to apply to modern life. These popular phrases were used by her Syrian community for hundreds of years, but have fallen out of use. Cohen keeps a running Google document with all of the phrases, which she constantly updates with new notes as she ruminates on the phrases until she deciphers their deeper meanings, which then, often, inspire a work of art.”
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Haaretz also mentioned Lenore in the article Fifteen Ways of Looking at the Old City.
The work of Lenore Mizrachi-Cohen, an artist in residence from Brooklyn who is here with her family, is also being featured. Brought here on a pilot program by Biennale founder Rami Ozeri, she told Haaretz she is “working on a series that combines scenes all over Jerusalem with Arabic calligraphy.” She said she is drawing on her Syrian roots, incorporating elements such as a diploma of her grandfather’s from Aleppo.
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