Category: Event

The body of the artist proposes itself as a living altar, offered for a moment of reflection, meditation, prayer, and request, not for a god or saint, but for the world.  

In the Christian religion, lighting a candle opens one’s heart to God and thus raises a prayer towards him. It is also a way of expressing one’s attachment to a saint in particular by making a request or even thanking him. An offering accompanies this approach.  

The artist’s body proposes itself as a living altar, offered for reflection, meditation, prayer, and request, not for a god or a saint, but for the world.

Here, the ritual is proposed to allow oneself to express their concern, fear, and sorrow for the world – it is a way of reacting to the environmental despair that we are currently experiencing. 

This performance is inspired both by the artist’s rituals in a women’s circle to celebrate, among other things, the solstices and equinoxes, and Joanna Macy’s essay, “Acting with Environmental Despair” which asks the question: “Can we recognize our sorrow for the world and live with it in a way that affirms our existence and frees our power to act?”  

A year ago, the first version of this performance was presented during the Trouble Festival. In this context, more than sixty sorrows were laid at the foot of the altar. These anonymous sorrows will be engraved next to each other on one of the walls of the exhibition, during several one-off sessions between April 11 and September 1.  

 

Performance from 6:30 pm

 

Barbara Salomé Felgenhauer (1992, Huy, Belgium) lives and works in Brussels. A multidisciplinary artist, her practice covers photography, film, performance, and installation. The question of narrative and the power of words and ideas runs through her work. She uses storytelling as an experience of emancipation and empowerment from gender norms and stereotypes and as a creative force of the universe to induce new relationships to worlds.

She graduated from the photography workshop at ESA Saint-Luc in Liège in 2013 and from ENSAV La Cambre in Brussels in 2022. She obtained her master’s degree with Grand Distinction and the Boghossian Foundation Prize 2022 with her project Terrapolis.

 

Celebrate Pesach with us!

We’re delighted to invite you to a one-day Pesach celebration on April 14 at 3pm.
Pesach, also known as Passover, is one of Judaism’s three pilgrimage holidays, commemorating the exodus of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt according to the Torah’s Book of Exodus. The holiday evokes the notion of renewal, of freedom, and is honored through several rituals, including the consumption of unleavened bread (matza) and the celebration of the Passover meal.

Program :

Matzot-making workshop for children: Our young participants will have the opportunity to take part in a Matza bread-making workshop. They’ll have the opportunity to discover the importance of this ancestral tradition by getting their hands dirty.

Guided tour of the “Passage – Textiles & Ritual” exhibition: We also invite you to a guided tour of our “Passage – Textiles & Ritual” exhibition, a fascinating exploration of Jewish textiles and rituals.

This event is organized in collaboration with the European Jewish Community Centre (EJCC).

As part of NOCTURNES, the third “Passage” tour will open on April 11 in our Project Space, inviting you to explore the contemporary resurgence of beliefs and rituals through a program of unique performances.

In Turkish culture, when you welcome someone, you give them your bed, your home. Misafirperverlik means «hospitality » in Turkish. The term has Arabic roots: «musafir», «safar», which also means «hunger» and «he or she who goes on an expedition, who goes far away». And Persian roots: «parvar», meaning «to feed, to bring up, to educate». Misafirperver therefore means «he or she
who feeds his or her guest».

The performance is two-fold: «the preparation» and «the meal».
Duration: 2 h00.

Hilal Aydoğdu (1998, Liège), holds a Master’s degree in drawing from the Académie des Beaux-Arts de Liège and has practiced performance art for several years, in depth at La Cambre.


Hilal questions the place of women in a man’s world. She proposes to apprehend the devices that work to establish a deleterious hegemony – that of patriarchy – mainly through culture, by exploring the morbid lexicon of the values and injunctions it conveys: honor, virginity, obedience. Performance and installation allow her words to take shape; by breaking the boundaries between the object and
its flesh, by playing with what can be forced together, she attempts to suggest imbalance, to let the union give rise to vertigo, and vertigo to fall.


She aims to confront the order that strikes in the name of ideals that damage women with the consequences of its reign, reflecting back to it the horror and pain they generate.

Program :

  • guided tour of the “Passage” exhibition at 6pm (FR)
  • guided tour of the “Passage” exhibition at 6:30pm (NL)
  • Performance Misafirperver by Hilal Aydoğdu from 6 pm to 8 pm (FR,NL,EN)

    For bookings –> via the Nocturnes website (ticket sales open on March 25)

At the heart of the Laboratory of Rituals project, four performance artists – Hilal Aydoğdu, David Bernstein, Barbara Salomé Felgenhauer et Zinaïda Tchelidze – are committed to creating new mythologies that re-en­chant the world.

In this artistic laboratory, these artists explore the depths of the collective imagination, venturing into the mean­ders of history, culture and tradition. They invite us to plunge into their artistic universes, to cross passages between the visible and invisible worlds, in order to discover new perspectives and new understandings of the world.

Through their performances, these artists offer us intense moments where the sacred and the profane meet, where emotions blossom and questions multiply. They open doors to sensory and intellectual experiences, inviting us to reflect on our own relationship with beliefs, myths and rituals.

The Laboratory of Rituals is more than just an exhibition. It’s a space for artistic exploration, where cross-cultu­ral performers meet, question and share their worldviews. It’s a call for reflection and wonder, as well as the creation of new mythologies that revive our existence.

The Laboratory of Rituals will open on April 11 in our Project Space and invites you to explore the contemporary resurgence of beliefs and rites through a program of unique performances. The first performance will take place as part of the Nocturnes event.

Program :

Misafirperver – Hilal Aydoğdu – 11.04.2024

La Chapelle des peines pour le monde – Barbara Salomé Felgenhauer – 22.05.2024

Even if it’s not true, it’s well found – David Bernstein – 6.06.2024

To your arrival and our welcome – Zinaïda Tchelidze – 1.09.2024

On the occasion of INTERNATIONAL ROMA DAY, the Jewish Museum of Belgium is pleased to invite you to an event dedicated to celebrating Roma culture and raising awareness of anti-Roma discrimination.

In partnership with ESMA, Carrefour des Cultures:

ESMA-CC is an association that promotes and supports artists, cultural creations and music from the Balkans and Roma, with the aim of encouraging encounters, debate and dialogue between groups, communities and cultural players in civil society.


Program

  • 3:30 pm: Conference: Carol Silverman (Eng – Fr)
  • 4:45 pm: Q&A
  • 5:00 pm: Break
  • 5:30 p.m.: Concerts
  • 6:30 pm: Drink of friendship
    Price
    Price: 7 euros on site
    Free for students

Free event

Conference

Historical and cultural contexts of klezmer and Balkan Romani music: comparisons and contrasts
Jews and Roma are often considered Europe’s two most emblematic minority groups. Both communities have greatly enriched the culture and arts of Eastern Europe, while facing historical discrimination, including the Nazi genocide. This illustrated lecture explores the cultural links and differences between Jews and Roma in Eastern Europe. Focusing on music, we will examine the professional role of klezmer and Roma musicians, as well as the context of their repertoire and performances in ritual and family life. Today, Balkan Romani music is not only a dynamic community asset, but also a global musical product; klezmer is also being creatively revitalized and recast. At the same time, anti-Semitism and anti-Gypsyism are on the rise. In these difficult times, music can serve as a tool in the fight against neo-nationalism and xenophobia.

  • Carol Silverman

Carol Silverman has been interested in Balkan music and culture for over forty years as a researcher, teacher, artist and activist. Professor Emerita of Cultural Anthropology and Folklore at the University of Oregon, she has taught Jewish and Balkan folklore, focusing on music, festivals, cultural policy and human rights issue

Concerts

  • ESMA Next Generation Band
  • Vilmos Csikos, Anette Dukane Csikos, Duka Vilmos
  • The Klezmer Society

Exhibition

  • Ceija Stojka

Ceija Stojka was born in Austria in 1933, the fifth of six children in a family of Roma horse traders. Deported at the age of ten with her mother Sidonie and other family members, she survived three concentration camps: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen. 

It was only forty-five years later, in 1988, at the age of fifty-five, that she felt the need and the necessity to talk about it; she embarked on a fantastic work of remembrance and, despite being considered illiterate, wrote several poignant books, in a poetic and highly personal style, which made her the first Roma woman survivor of the death camps to bear witness to her concentration camp experience, against oblivion and denial, against the prevailing racism. 


SKINFOLD is a durational performance in which bodies move alongside each other in reciprocal recognition, leaning towards and exploring internalised landscapes in an attempt of soft transformations.

Tending to an embodied habitat, where boundaries of flesh and body image continuously blur, the performers allow themselves to shift their representational features and ways of bodily perceptions. What does it mean to inhabit a body? This body?

These strategies for a utopian and transformative practice stem from an ongoing choreographic research initiated by Abigail Aleksander and Mary Szydlowska. Presented for the first time in the context of Shoshana Walfish’s exhibition, SKINFOLD responds and converses with Walfish’s paintings series Illusive Bodies; where representation and corporealities are put into interpretational play. 

———

Abigail Aleksander and Mary Szydlowska are performers & choreographers based in Brussels. They met in 2019 during their respective studies at P.A.R.T.S. and have been engaged in each other’s work since. SKINFOLD is their first performance collaboration. 

Abigail Aleksander works as a performer and collaborator with a variety of art makers including: Philipp Gehmacher, Michiel Vandevelde, Jan Martens and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. She began her dance training in London before graduating with a BA from P.A.R.T.S in 2022. SKINFOLD is her first choreographic work. 

Mary Szydlowska’s practice varies between movement, installation and sculptural objects. Since graduating from MA STUDIOS programme at P.A.R.T.S, they’ve been making solo performances touching upon the notions of peripheral, withdrawn and invisible phenomena. Their work has been supported and presented by Beursschwourburg, IKOB Museum, Brussels Gallery Weekend, Zachęta National Gallery in Warsaw, workspacebrussels, wp zimmer, CC Strombeek and others. 

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Program :
1:30pm – Doors open
2pm to 5pm – SKINFOLD performance
5:15pm – Artist talk moderated by Persis Bekkering
6:30pm – Doors close

*The performance lasts for three hours, the audience can come, go and return freely. To avoid overcrowding, the performance can host 15 guests at one time, you may need to wait if this number is exceeded.

Credits:

Concept, choreography, performance Abigail Aleksander / Mary Szydlowska Music composition, Hannah Todt Special thanks to Shoshana Walfish, PARTS, Steven De Belder, Steven Peeters.

This project is supported by the Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie (VGC).

Immerse yourself in the universe of “Pierrot Lunaire” by Arnold Schoenberg by attending a concert organized by the Royal Conservatory of Brussels.

A group of young artists, singers, and instrumentalists, are determined to confront the sacred monster of the Second Viennese School: Pierrot Lunaire. Together, and without a conductor, they attempt to capture the power of Arnold Schoenberg’s music, its extraordinary expressive and visionary force.

Don’t miss out on this unique musical experience!

Program:
6:30 PM – Doors Open
7:00 PM – Concert
8:00 PM – Drinks
9:00 PM – Doors Close

Free entry, reservation required.

Location: Jewish Museum of Belgium, Rue des Minimes 21, 1000 Brussels, Belgium.
In partnership with the Royal Conservatory of Brussels.

As part of the Photo Brussels Festival, the Jewish Museum of Belgium invites you to the closing of its exhibition “Erwin Blumenfeld. Photography. 1930-1950” on 4 February 2024 at 4pm for a guided tour in the presence of the Director of Exhibitions, Bruno Benvindo, and the photographer’s granddaughter, Nadia Blumenfeld Charbit.

This is the last opportunity to discover an exhibition devoted to one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century: Erwin Blumenfeld (1897-1969). Known for his exceptionally creative fashion photographs, Blumenfeld’s work is polymorphous, combining Dadaist inspiration, political commitment and artistic experimentation.

Featuring over a hundred photographs, the exhibition looks back at the life of this Berlin Jew, who was part of the cultural avant-garde in Amsterdam and then Paris, before being interned when the Second World War broke out. He managed to take refuge in New York at the last minute in 1941, where he enjoyed a successful career, marked by a free exploration of form and colour.

Program : 

Doors open at 3:30 p.m.

Guided tour from 4pm to 5pm with Nadia Blumenfeld Charbit (in FR).

Drinks from 5.00 p.m. to 6.00 p.m.

Doors close at 6.30pm.

Price: 10 euros (including access to the exhibition) / Free for students

Registration available here.

We are pleased to invite you to the MultiMemo Dissemination Conference and Holocaust Commemoration Event.

This event is organized by CEJI – A Jewish Contribution to an inclusive Europe, in partnership with the Jewish Museum of Belgium, as part of the EU funded project MultiMemo – Multidirectional Memory: Remembering for Social Justice.

The MultiMemo project proposes an intersectional approach to remembrance – one that underscores the relevance of memory for social justice and the need to face contemporary challenges related to human rights violations, military conflicts and violence, social exclusion, and the migration crisis.

The first MultiMemo dissemination conference and commemoration event aims to promote a new language of commemoration through a multidirectional approach to holocaust remembrance based on the four principles of inclusivity, sustainability, the rescuing of memory, and epistemic justice through arts, academia, urbanism, activism, and policy making.
 

Date & Time:

21st of January 2024, 16.00h (CET).
 

Location:

Jewish Museum of Belgium.


Language

The event will be in English. Translation into French and Dutch will be provided.


Registration

Click here to fill in the registration form. Please note that there is a limited number of seats. Registration closes on January 15th.

The Jewish Museum of Belgium invites you to discover “Les Guerrières de la Paix”, a documentary directed by Hanna Assouline and Jessica Bertaux in 2018.


In 2014, Israeli and Palestinian women decided to create an informal movement: Women Wage Peace. These women came together around a demand as simple as it was terribly audacious: that their leaders meet again around a negotiating table. In 2018, there are now tens of thousands of them, from all political backgrounds and origins. They are the warriors of peace.



Through this film and her recent speeches, Hanna Assouline strives to propose a humanist path, “without slogan nor flag”, to transcend the various antagonistic narratives at play and bring everyone together beyond their respective reactionary opinions.

This kind of apolitical approach presented in the documentary is often misunderstood and interpreted as ignoring the complexity of reality. We will examine its properties and relevance. Together we will question the essence of the word “peace”, the evocation of which now frequently arises suspicion and polemics, in order to understand how to restore its unifying character.



Program :

Doors open 6:30pm

Screening of the film “Les Guerrières de la Paix” at 7:00 pm

Meeting with Hanna Assouline at 8:00 pm, hosted by Sarah Halfin.

Director – Peace activist, committed to combating racism and anti-Semitism – Founding Co-President of Guerrières de la Paix and the Women’s World Peace Forum.

Sarah Halfin is a management engineer by training. She is a regular contributor to various Belgian media and moderator of major philosophical conferences. She is currently a board member of the Fondation Haïm and the CEJI.