Musée Juif de Belgique

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.

The last exhibition of the Jewish Museum of Belgium before closing for construction works in late 2024, Passage reflects on the idea of transformation. It explores how the spiritual blends with the profane life, how the rite combines with the ordinary, and what happens when the collective and the intimate tie together.

The exhibition consists of three complementary paths. The first immerses us in the universe of Charlemagne Palestine. In an installation entitled «AA BATT BEARR BARR MITZVAHH INN MESHUGAHLANDDD», the artist reinterprets the transition to adulthood in the Jewish tradition. In the tradition of schmattès, the Yiddish word for rags or second-hand clothes, he reinvents the gestures of collecting, sewing, and mending the fabric that mark the history of the Jewish worlds.

Echoing the fabric assemblages of Charlemagne Palestine, the second route proposes a dialogue around textiles, by crossing the collections of the Jewish Museum of Belgium, those of the Center of Judeo-Moroccan Culture, and the interventions of four contemporary artists: Jennifer Bornstein, Richard Moszkowicz, Elise Peroi, Arlette Vermeiren. This game of free-spirited associations reminds us that textile work is, in itself, a ritual practice and that women occupy a central place in it. It also shows that fabrics are never a mere adornment: alternately, they are places of memory, symbols of celebration, or accessions to the sacred.

Through a performances program, the third path questions the contemporary resurgence of beliefs and rites. Hilal Aydoğdu, David Bernstein, Barbara Salomé Felgenhauer, and Zinaïda Tchelidze rethink the museum space to create an intimate and sensory laboratory, conducive to reflection and exchange.

A symbolic gesture, Passage is not only the end point of an exhibition program that has been running in this building for over twenty years. This exhibition questions the future Jewish Museum, which will also imagine new forms of passages.

circumcision cloths, Arlon, 1843, 1888, 1875, Antwerp, 1802

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.

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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).

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:

21^st 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.

From September 29, the Jewish Museum of Belgium proposes an exhibition featuring the photographer Erwin Blumenfeld (1897-1969). Famous for his exceptionnaly creative fashion portraits, Blumenfeld’s artistry is offers a polymorphic work where Dadaïst inspiration, political committment and artistic expérimentations intertwine.

Featuring over a hundred photographs, the exhibition looks back at the life of this Berlin Jew who evolved within the cultural avant-garde movement in Amsterdam and Paris. As WWII broke out, he endured internment in a camp but was able to flee to New York in 1941 where his art blossomed with a free exploration of shapes and colors.