The Jewish Street Art Festival is thrilled to present a series of murals as a part of Dwelling in a Time of Plagues, a coast-to-coast Jewish artistic response to contemporary plagues. Coinciding with the holiday of Passover, during which we remember the 10 Plagues visited upon the Egyptians, the works for Dwelling in a Time of Plagues reinterpret the themes of Passover in response to our times. Jewish Street Art Festival Passover 2021 – Contemporary Plagues brings four muralists into a dialogue responding to different contemporary plagues and creating works in NYC, Charlotte, and Toronto. The Festival is produced by Asylum Arts and Hillel Smith, in collaboration with LABA, and made possible with the generous support of CANVAS.
The Festival will kick off at the opening of Dwelling in the Time of Plagues on March 25, 8pm EST / 5pm PST, featuring short talks by participating artists and contributors to the wider Dwelling project.
Then join the the Jewish Street Art Festival for a special conversation with our artists and partners on Wednesday, March 31 at 7:30pm EST / 4:30pm PST. See the five murals and hear from the artists about their work, and the plague themes inspiring their projects. During this 45-minute event, each artist will share their project and inspiration, with time for questions at the end.
What Sustains Us by Hillel Smith
JCC Harlem – 318 W 118th St, New York, NY 10026
Repair The World NYC – 808 Nostrand Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11216
Current circumstances have exacerbated the existing crisis of food insecurity in this country. Meanwhile, an unexpected consequence of the pandemic has been reconnecting us to how and what we eat as we spend more time at home. In Hillel Smith’s paired murals, What Sustains Us, he was inspired by the two quotes bracketing the beginning and end of Birkat Hamazon (the traditional prayer said after eating): “Hazan et hakol” (thanking God for sustaining everything and everyone) and “Na’ar Hayiti v’gam zakanti v’lo raiti tzadik ne’ezav…” (I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken…) He has designed a language of faces and body parts built out of utensils and food items—spoons, forks, knives, fruits, and veggies—that offer fun and whimsical encouragement to think about all that connects our bodies to what we eat.
Both& by Bareket Kezwer
Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre – 750 Spadina Ave, Toronto, ON M5S 2J2, Canada
Bareket Kezwer’s Both& inspires us to consider the plague of binary thinking. Passover is a holiday celebrating the duality of freedom and slavery, a time when we intentionally hold the paradox of life—the inseparability and interdependence of seemingly contradictory phenomena. Holding this paradox is not only part of fulfilling the mitzvah of retelling the story of our exodus from Egypt into the land of Israel, but also a lesson that can support us embracing the wholeness of life—especially as we navigate the uncertainty of this global pandemic. Slavery and freedom. Connection and alienation. Division and solidarity. Struggle and growth. Beauty and ugliness. Pleasure and pain. Simcha and sorrow. Recognizing that we cannot have one without the other, Bareket’s mural invites viewers to explore how we can create space and acceptance by shifting our perspective.
Havtacha (Promise) by Mike Wirth
The Stan Greenspon Center for Peace and Social Justice, Queens University of Charlotte – 1900 Selwyn Ave, Charlotte, NC 28274
Since the pandemic hit, many shelters in Charlotte, NC have had to close. This has forced hundreds of individuals and families to the streets and into a make-shift tent city that runs adjacent to a central highway. Many of these people have endured months of freezing temperatures and winter weather. A concerted effort is happening to assist these people, but still many in the community are unaware or choose to ignore the growing problem, and Mike’s mural titled, The Promise Havtacha
(הַבְטָחָה) is intended to raise awareness of this crisis. The piece is built around the concept of “a promise.” A promise is at the heart of virtually every system of faith. Spiritual, financial, societal, and interpersonal. The project will highlight the struggle that these individuals face on a daily basis brought on the pandemic and other systematic plagues that befall the Queen City.
This Place Has a Body by Maya Ciarrocchi
Mural – 14th Street Y – 344 E 14th St, New York, NY 10003
Video – ZAZ10TS, 10 Times Square – 1441 Broadway, New York, NY 10018
New York City is a city in constant flux and a place of ghosts. We live in apartments that housed countless generations of individuals and families, new buildings rise on top of the foundations of what came before, and long-familiar businesses open and close overnight. Now during the COVID-19 pandemic this flux is more rapid and the scale of loss so immense we barely have time to comprehend its breadth. Combining decorative details that adorned the walls and ceilings of now vanished wooden synagogues with her dancing body and the Unicorn, an ancient symbol of death and rebirth, Maya’s mural project and video installation This Place Has a Body, creates new fantastical spaces out of the residue of loss. The video installation will be showcased on the ZAZ Corner Billboard (South East Corner of 41st Street and 7th Avenue) and will concurrently be projected on the ZAZ10Ts Gallery Wall in the lobby of 10 Times Square.
