Aviva, From the series You Surely Come Back at Last, Inkjet Print, 24 x 36 in, 2023
Two young women discuss lessons with the rabbi over coffee. A man decides to plant trees and raise them as Jewish, instead of his kids. A woman witnesses the last thread of her marriage fly away on the evening of Shabbat.
You Surely Come Back at Last is a fictional conversation between photograph and story.
Images displayed throughout the gallery’s three sections are anchored by an audio installation that recounts three stories about women who encountered and negotiated conversion to Judaism in their lives. The portrait, still life, and diaristic photographs guide viewers throughout the gallery, question the stories back, and further entangle the characters, scenes, and aura of imagination.
The exhibition plays with the fictitious mediums of photography and story to center women’s narratives and poke at how religion shapes daily life and familial relationships, ultimately questioning what we are bound to and how it gets decided. At the core of the work, there is an openness to these artifacts - a scaffolding of boundaries with open doors - that lets intrigue, subtlety, and peace to surely come back at last.
