Updating About Me

Maya Escobar is a conceptual identity artist.

deconstructing the artist (myself), alongside the monument, alongside the monument's informational text...

______________________________

SELECTED STATEMENTS

______________________________

Bio for About Page 2010:Maya Escobar is a performance artist, Internet curator, and editor. She uses the web as a platform for engaging in critical community dialogues that concern processes by which identities are socially and culturally constructed. She performs multiple identities, sampling widely from online representations of existing cultural discourses. Her identifications as a Latina-Jewish artist, dyslexic blogger, activist and educator are indexed by the blogs she keeps, the visual and textual links she posts, the books, articles, and blog posts she cites, the public comments she leaves, and the groups she joins.Escobar received her MFA from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Washington University in St. Louis, and her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited work in Spain, Guatemala, United States, Germany, Venezuela, and Chile.Twitter Bio for @Maya_Ate_This 2010:I am a 2nd generation Latina artist, nutrition buff, and fitness enthusiast. Here, I'll be tweeting what I am eating as well as sharing beauty and fitness tips.Artista Disléxica Del Internet pt 1 of audition video for Reality TV Show on Discovery En Español 2010:[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T_8KzV8kLw]Short Bio for Acciones Plásticasプリクラ 2009:Maya Escobar is a Guatemalan-Jewish digital media and performance artist, currently living in St. Louis. Her work addresses issues of cultural hybridity, gender, placelessness, and the construction of identity.Bio for Conney Conference on Jewish Identity 2009:Maya Escobar is a Guatemalan Jewish digital media and performance artist. She received a BFA with an emphasis in Art Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently completing her MFA at Washington University in St. Louis. She can usually be found on the web blogging, tweeting, or youtubing. Escobar also serves as the online art editor for Zeek: A Journal of Jewish Thought and Culture. She has taught, performed and exhibited work in Germany, Spain, Guatemala, Puerto Rico and the United States.About Me for Maya E. on Jewish Wedding Network (2009):I have always lived between multiple worlds, I come from a Guatemalan Jewish American family of activists and educators. The planning of my wedding is like most things other things we do, a familiar and communal affair. In addition to the Bosa Nova band that will perform, my fiancee's band rock band Cavalry will be covering various Jewish tunes such as hava negilah and more.Breaking Down the Elephant Blog Post 2009:Some people think that I am the true representation of the elephant.It is true I am an elephant, but not the only elephant.I try to break up the conception of being the only elephant.Some people see a small portion of my work and think it is the whole- the representative elephant.Others understand that each piece connects to another piece and that individually they are only fragments.When breaking the elephant up into pieces, information slips in through the cracks.People also respond to this new information- creating a bigger more amorphous elephant.The amorphous elephant is broken up again and again, so that it is relevant to new individuals new experiences…Manifesto for MFA Thesis Exhibition Catalog 2009:As an artist and an individual, I am in constant conversation with the values transposed through multiculturalism. I seek to challenge notions of sameness, unity, and political correctness with pieces that affirm a sense of community for some, while paradoxically alienating others.Major influxes in international travel, technological advances, immigration, adoption, and intermarriage are causing the borders and boundaries between countries to merge together at an increasingly rapid pace. The imagined spaces of individual cultures are no longer autonomous.Therefore it is with a conscious move that I, and many colleagues and contemporaries, unapologetically go forward, breaking through traditional conceptions of art and artistic practice. No longer tied down to medium-specific practices, we produce work derivative of a multitude of discourses. The works that we produce, however, are distinct from those in the  fields that our work represents. We are concerned with the past, but we will not allow the past  to solely delineate the future. We hope to form a new definition of artistic practice that will include our constantly shifting environment.Short Web Bio for Stumble Upon 2008:MFA Candidate at Washington University in St. Louis. Current art/research centers around mental constructions of space and the social and political implications that result from these imagined boundaries. On this blog I share my random thoughts on hybridity, transnational and transcultural identities, liberal multiculturalism, critical pedagogy, feminist theory, latinidad, jewish life in america, youth culture...Bio for Acciones Plásticas at the Bruno David Gallery 2007:Maya Escobar is a Guatemalan Jewish interdisciplinary artist and educator. She is a recent graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received a BFA with an emphasis in Art Education. She has taught, performed and exhibited work in Spain, Guatemala, Puerto Rico and the United States.  Currently, Escobar is pursuing a MFA in Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.Bio for Camp JRF 2007:Maya Escobar is a Guatemalan Jewish interdisciplinary artist and educator. She is currently completing her degree in Art Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Sharing her non-traditional approach to exploring Jewish identity, Maya will expose campers to a wide variety of contemporary artists, artistic mediums and processes. Campers will have the opportunity to work both independently and as a collective, to produce work that inspires and participates in ongoing personal and communal dialogue.Artist Statement 2006:Through the performance of actual and fictitious moments of my life, I explore my personal identity as the daughter of a Guatemalan father and Jewish mother.  I compare the complexities of projected societal, cultural, and gender-determined roles to the lived experiences of Latina and Jewish women in our contemporary American culture. My work translates ongoing anthropological and sociological investigation into accessible narrative forms, incorporating technical skills in multiple mediums. As a commentary to the objectification and exoticization of otherness that I have personally experienced, I reclaim ownership of myself; I transform my body as well my “self” into an object used within the performed ritual, which is then documented through analog and digital photo, video and collage.

Jewish Women on DovBear

Last night @DovBear sent me this tweet:

@Mayaescobar posted your jewish women clip w\o realizing it was parody. A little too well done. ;)

I visited his blog and found a post on Jewish Women called Too much kool-aid. The comments generated by this post are really interesting and address the video from a multitude of perspectives.expert from his post:

"Aside: At the end, the woman on the film suggests that Jewish women who are dissatisfied with their back of the bus status secretly wish to be men. There's some truth to that, of course. Jewish women wish to be men in the same way that Jim Crow blacks wished to be white, meaning they want the same freedoms and opportunities that are available to men. Though Judaism has made much progress in this regard, the RW and Ultra circles still run like MadMen. Telling women they're more spiritual, pat pat, run along, is just a way to protect the status quo."

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H8mpau6dSc]

Jewish Women from the series Acciones Plásticas 2007

click here to see FULL POST and COMMENTS

selection comments posted below:

zapp645if you follow the link-trail, it becomes clear that this video is likely making fun of the attitudes it depicts. so as right as what you say in this post is, it's not really aimed at this video...

urielSo are you opposed to any distinction whatsoever between men and women in Judaism? Do you think we should get rid of the mechitza and the laws of niddah and negiah and tzniut because they all make distinctions between male/female and thus somehow discriminate against and oppress women? If so, why aren't you a Conservative Jew? If not, why not? What kinds of distinctions between men and women are not discriminatory in your book?The fact is, Judaism have a very conservative halachic process that makes it difficult or impossible to change most things. Do you think we should change that process to make it easier to make big changes? If so how is that different from the Conservatives?People mistakenly think that every explanation for distinctions between men and women must be some kind of conspiratorial justification for the status quo. But that's not true. You have to look at the history of the explanation. For example, consider shelo asani isha. The explanation is, women, slaves and gentiles don't have to perform certain mitzvot, so we're thanking Hashem for giving us more mitzvot to do. Conspiracy to trick people into thinking Judaism isn't sexist? No -- it's in the tosefta to the earlier version of the three berachot (which thanked Hashem for not making one an ignoramus.) So that supposedly "P.C." explanation was from before the mitzvah was even finalized!It's a mistake to think about Judaism in the same terms you think about American history. It's apples and oranges. If not, you'd be calling someone a "bigot" for not accepting the ordination of women, just like many liberals today will call you a bigot if you don't accept gay marriage. Of course bigot is an implicit reference to anti-black American racism. Which is a lot different from differing roles of the sexes in Judaism.

NoPeanutzActually, oppressing women is the best reason to get rid of the mechitza.  Nidda has nothing to do with this.And Tzniut has nothing to do with this.  Tzniut has everything to do with social norms. Oppressive double-standard tzniut should be abolished immediately,

NoPeanutzAnd you do not have to be a Conservative Jew to understand this.  You just have to be an Orthodox woman.

AnonymousAFIK the mechitza is an outcropping of the orthodox halachic process.  It is at least a universally (amongst orthodox) practice minhag.  How would abolishing the mechitza be consistent with orthodox Judaism?I enjoy davening in my own (men's) section, because I would likely feel distracted/embarrassed by any attractive women in our shul standing next to me, hearing me sing, etc.  I don't see how this translates into a desire on my part to oppress women.  I'm sure there are men who wouldn't feel this way, and would probably daven just fine, just as there are young men, on the other side of the spectrum, who would maybe even ogle women.  But it's impossible to satisfy everyone in a community.I agree that there are misogynists in Jewish communities, but I don't think allocating separate space to men and women in the synagogue automatically translates into oppressing women.

NoPeanutzIn most Orthodox shuls, I would agree that most mechitzot themselves are misogynistic.Buried in the back, or the corner, with an obstructed view of the proceedings.The purpose of the mechitza is to allow for the inclusion of women in the service.  Not the exclusion.

it depends on who you're dealing with. i do remember once watching a woman scream at someone for reverse sexism and when iu asked "what about me? i do the same!" they replied "you take the additude seriously and actualy believe we're inherently better than men... and act in a fashion ment to prove it"so it really depends upon how it is felt about and put into practice lemaise. I remember one woman quoting a sicha of the lubavitcher rebbe ztz"l a"h and saying "it sounds like litvish appologetics doesn't it?" she then adds "well there is a difference, the litvishers are telling this to women, the rebbe first said this sicha to men!"

urielThis wikipedia article seems to support your views, except for the citation of R' Hirsh (who might be hard to depict as a feminist). But the article may be leaving out earlier sources.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role_of_women_in_Judaism#Debates_within_Orthodoxy

RubyVIt's part of a series called Acciones Plasticas by a Jewish Latina artist.   http://mayaescobar.com/accionesplasticas.html It looks like an examination/satire of the stereotypes associated with her heritage.

E. FinkTITCR

Sh'lomo'Whoah, that lady had the most steriotypical modeof Ashkenazi-Jewish speech I ever saw...

DovBearUriel do you really and truly think everything frum Jews say and do is authentically Jewish? well guess again. The post is a critism of the man made culture, not the god decreed religion.

urielThe answer to your question is no. Will you answer my questions?

urielLook at the quote from Rav Hirsh in the wikipedia article and you'll see that the idea that women are more spiritual than men is indeed authenticly Jewish (unless you see Rav Hirsch as some kind of pre-feminist apoogist). How old it is, I'm not so sure.

DovBearThe idea that women have a better nature or more spiritual is NOT authenticly Jewish. We know this because non Jews got fed the same horse manure as a way of keeping them satisfied with less. Look, I dont even know what youre arguing: The more right you go the worse off Jewish women are -in satmar they cant even drive and have to shave their heads. Thats an inrefutable facr.

urielThat's an odd way of proving something, you have to admit. I think a better way is to see how old an idea is. But even if it's not that old, if Rav Hirsh and Rav Aaron Soloveichik said it, I would say that's pretty authentic. Something doesn't have to be somewhere in the Mishnah to be authentic (though the older the more authentic). Much of kabbalah, mussar and chassidus would be inauthentic if that were your standard. At that point you'd be creating your own special denomination that is very picky and choosy about what in modern Judaism is authentic to you -- and that sounds like Reform.

urielAre you saying Satmar is more authentic than other Jewish groups? Chazal surely had more contact with heretics and gentiles than Satmar does.

E. FinkI think Zapp is right.

This is a parody / satire for sure. She is NOT serious.

Also check out comments generated by a 2007 post by DovBear on Shomer Negiah Panties called Tzittzit for women?.

Tzit Tzit: Fiber Art and Jewish Identity

I met Ben Schachter at the 2009 Conney Conference on Jewish Art: Performing Histories, Inscribing Jewishness, where coincidentally, we both presented Eruv themed works.In addition to making humorous Jewish themed conceptual art, Ben is a curator and is the man behind Tzit Tzit: Fiber Art and Jewish Identity. I have a few pieces from Hiddur Mitzvah included in the show.A special exhibit assembled by guest curator Ben Schachter, “Tzit Tzit: Fiber Art and Jewish Identity,” will open with a reception at The Saint Vincent Gallery in the Robert S. Carey Student Center at Saint Vincent College from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday, January 28. Admission is free and open to the public.The exhibit will continue from Friday, January 29 through Sunday, February 21 during regular Gallery hours: 12 noon to 3 p.m. and 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays; 12 noon to 3 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. The Gallery is closed on Mondays.Participating artists include Maya Escobar, Melanie Dankowicz, Carol Es, Leslie Golomb, Louise Silk and Shirah Apple.Ms. Silk will present a lecture, “Quilting and Spirituality,” at 6 p.m. Monday, February 9 in room 100 of Prep Hall.Mr. Schachter, associate professor of fine arts, will give a Gallery tour of the exhibition at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, February 9.The exhibit was developed by Mr. Schachter. “I have been studying various aspects of Jewish art for the past three years and this exhibit is an outgrowth of that interest,” Mr. Schachter said. “The artists hail from Los Angeles, New York City, Kansas City, Illinois and Pittsburgh.”“Fiber art refers to any use of a cloth such as stitching or weaving,” he explained. “The title, Tzit Tzit, refers to the fringe on a prayer shawl, or tallis, worn by many Jews during prayer. While using thread, cloth, pattern making, stitching and other craft materials, each artists’ process creates a language derived from craft techniques that reinterprets the Old Testament, the oral law as written in the Talmud and personal histories. In so doing, both craft theory and Jewish Art are reinvigorated. I learned of these artists through Jewish art conferences I have attended, through exhibitions and through national awards. I think our students and our friends in the region will really enjoy seeing their work.”Ben Schachter is an artist whose work integrates conceptual art and Jewish law. He sees a connection between the rules artists have created to guide and limit their work and Jewish traditions. His work has been shown nationally and will be on exhibition at the Westmoreland Museum of Art in Greensburg concurrent with this exhibition. He holds an M.F.A. and M.S. degree from Pratt Institute and lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and two children.Carol Es paints images that powerfully scream of a life of hard labor. As a child she worked endless hours in a sweatshop with her family. Ms. Es' works are featured in numerous private and public collections, including the Getty Museum, Brooklyn Museum, UCLA Special Collections, the Jaffe Collection and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. She is also a two-time recipient of the ARC Grant from the Durfee Foundation and was recently awarded the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Fellowship.Maya Escobar’s work directly challenges gender roles and illustrates how Jewish tradition empowers women. Ms. Escobar received her master of fine arts degree from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Washington University in St. Louis, and her bachelor of fine arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited work in Spain, Guatemala, United States, Germany and Venezuela.Melanie Dankowicz creates intricate papercut sculptures, marriage contracts, and wall art. An expansion of the medium, Dankowicz's three-dimensional forms are ephemeral lace-like paper structures, of elegant tracery that has inspired her recent metalwork. She draws inspiration from the countryside of Illinois, where she resides with Harry and their three children.Leslie Golomb exhibits her work nationally and internationally and is the recipient of numerous awards, including recognition from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Individual Artists Fellowship Award and a State of the Art Award from the State Museum of Pennsylvania. Her work was recently included in the Three Rivers Arts Festival and Best of Pittsburgh Invitational. Ms. Golomb holds a bachelor in fine arts from Carnegie-Mellon University and a master of fine arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She served as founder and director of the American Jewish Museum of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh for nine years. She has returned to the studio producing prints and artists books.Louise Silk began her quest to acquire skills as a quilter after being inspired by an article in Ms. Magazine in 1971 about quilt making as a woman's art form. Over the past 30 years, her work has been included in Quilt National Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary Quilts as well as many private corporate collections such as USAirways, Paine Webber and PNC Bank. She is a certified Integrated Kabbalistic Healer. She is currently living and working from her loft in the South Side of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.Ms. Golumb and Ms. Silk collaborate and join their printmaking and fiber art into multilayered quilts, runners and tallisim. The images and techniques bring together American folk traditions and Jewish history in surprising ways. Ultimately the perspective of these five artists reinvigorates what Jewish Art is and can become.Shirah Apple received a master of fine arts degree from the Rinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2006. She is a graduate of MICA’s post-baccalaureate certificate program and of Miami University, where she received a bachelor of science degree in business administration.Further information about the exhibition is available by contacting the Gallery at 724 805-2107, www.stvincent.edu/gallery.

Papi's fotos de Janukah

My papi, Gonzalo Escobar, took some amazing photos this Channukah. His shots really put my cellphone pics to shame.  Click here to see more.

rio prayed for la virgen de guadalupe and instead got...

If I haven't mentioned it before, I am quite the fan of awful horrible animated gifs.  As I continue to work with seeNoga and Rio Yañez on the Jewish characters from Acciones Plásticas プリクラ: The Jewess Blogging Queen, The Avodah Girl and The 612er; I thought I would share this terrible image created early on in our collaboration. There is also another version (which I can no longer find) where in last frame of the gif sequence, it rains diet cokes. :)

CHAP OPENING 12/6

Show opens 12/6.  If you haven't seen it, check out guest post I did on MyJewishLearing.com about my father's and my piece in the show.

Becoming Mainstream?

ModernTribes's New Jews

In response to CNN's piece 'New Jews' stake a claim to faith, culture, ModernTribe created their own list of New Jews. I am flattered to be included alongside my buddies Matthue Roth and Lisa Alcaly Klug.

Berlin's Eruv Talk

I will be presenting Berlin's Eruv at KAM Isaiah Israel, as part of their World Jewry Program, this Sunday, November 8th. The lecture is open to the public.

video still from interview with Moshe Or

In 2008 I traveled to Berlin as part of exchange program with my University. Prior to this visit, I had never been to Germany- nor did I have any particular reservations about going or not going, but it seemed everyone else had their own opinion on the matter.“Germany, how can you go there as a Jew?” “There are Jews in Germany? I thought they were all dead?” “You are so brave to go to Germany…”Ultimately people’s projections as to my intentions for going to Germany became the filter through which I experienced Berlin.While I was in Berlin I conducted interviews with members of the community concerning the highly visible presence of the monuments and memorials commemorating Jewish life (death) have impacted their individual and communal Jewish identities. Other topics included: the notion of German Jews vs Jews living in Germany and how this differs from an American Jewish identity, their status as diaspora Jews and their relationship to Israel, their thoughts on the European Union, anti-semitism and the widespread use of facebook as a mode of connection.The title of the piece Berlin’s Eruv is a play on the fact that there is not actually an eruv in Berlin.  An eruv is a rabbinically sanctioned demarcation of space that transforms public space into private space for the purposes of the Sabbath, allowing Orthodox Jews to carry in public places, a practice which is otherwise prohibited. Modern eruvs are often made of wire strung between utility poles, a gesture towards a “walled courtyard,” indicating an enclosed, private space.Just as the eruv exists in the minds of the people who abide by it, Berlin’s Eruv manifests itself through the conversations surrounding the idea of the piece. The interviews I conducted in Berlin relied on the presence of institutionalized markers of Jewish identity, to give weight to the idea non-presence of the living Jewish community.

Berlin's Eruv Talk

11/8/09 @ 10:30 amKAM Isaiah Israel1100 E Hyde Park BlvdChicago, IL 60615-2810773-924-1234

SHOMER NEGIAH PANTIES ON ESTY

Shomer Negiah Panties have finally arrived!!  Get a them on ShomerNegiahPanties.com and EtsyShomer Negiah is a concept in Jewish law halacha that prohibits any degree of physical contact with, or touching of, a member of the opposite sex, except for one’s spouse and immediate family. Shomer means “guards”, but due to its common use in phrases relating to religious practice, it has come to mean: “adhere to” as well. Negiah is the Hebrew word for “touch”, and thus Shomer Negiah is a term used to describe one who “guards the touch” or simply “adheres to restrictions of touch”. Although the feminine form of the term is technically Shomeret Negiah, it is almost always used in the masculine, even when in reference to women. Shomer Negiah Panties allow a woman to abide by the halacha, but still be individual and sexy at the same time.

Orchard Street Artist Cultural Heritage Project

My father and I participated in the Orchard Street Artist Cultural Heritage Project.

During the months of December 2009 and January 2010, The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art in New Haven, Connecticut will come alive with memories, recollections, and recreations of an important community heritage site,  in an innovative group installation designed to both stimulate reflection on the legacies of past generations and engage the public in dreams for the future.The Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Artists Project is an art exhibition, a history lesson,  a point of cultural exchange, and meeting place for dreamers, both nostalgic and visionary.  Artists, researchers, and scholars have joined together to celebrate an important historic New Haven landmark which was once central to the life of a large Jewish immigrant population in the Oak Street neighborhood.Urban changes in the last 50 years have all but erased evidence illustrating the importance of the Oak Street neighborhood in the lives of the newly arrived immigrants and migrants who populated much of the area now known as the "Oak Street Connector", Route 34.  Where some see open space, or a new hospital, or a school, or a parking lot, others with longer memories see shops bustling with activity, voices shouting in Yiddish and Italian, sprinkled with a variety of accents from elsewhere, including near and distant regions within the USA.Contributions to the installation offer a range of approaches.  Some artists researched the history of the Orchard Street Shul and its neighborhood, uncovering multiple stories of this community: stories of women working together to aid refugees, stories of hard-working fathers and mothers who dedicated themselves to making a better life for their children, and stories of teenagers who giggled and mingled on the steps of the Shul.   Others built on their own experiences, reaching into their hearts to create depictions of the Shul that are evocative of deeper connections with history and community.  Still others focused on the issues of urban renewal, making real the shifts in our urban landscape that are difficult to imagine as we visit the site today.Included in the Project are presentations by researchers from Yale University who developed innovative ways to document the building, including  virtual reconstructions exploring new digital methods, ground-breaking research by computer scientists that promises to change the ways that cultural heritage sites will be documented in the future.  Some contributing artists used this digital data in their creative work.The Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Project is organized by Cynthia Beth Rubin, a New Haven based artist, in collaboration with participating artists and researchers: Nancy Austin, Meg Bloom, DonnaMaria Bruton, Jeanne Criscola, Roslyn Z. Croog, Linda Drazen, Paul Duda, Gonzalo Escobar,  Maya Escobar, Alan Falk, Greg Garvey, Shalom Gorewitz, Jaime Kriksciun, Leslie J. Klein, Beth Krensky, Seth Lamberton, Mary Lesser, Lisa Link, David Ottenstein, Bruce Oren, Robert Rattner, Cynthia Beth Rubin, Holly Rushmeier, Janet Shafner, Frank Shifreen, Suzan Shutan, Sharon Siskin, Christina Spiesel, Yona Verwer, Julian Voloj, Laurie Wohl, Chen Xu, and Howard el-Yasin.  The group includes artists from California, Florida, Utah, Missouri, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New York, who traveled to New Haven to contribute to the project alongside artists from the region.A Project Book is being published in conjunction with the exhibition, including essays by Haisia Diner, the eminent scholar of Jewish immigration history,  Walter Cahn, renowned historian of art and and architecture, and Hana Iverson, known for her remarkable multi-media installation "View from the Balcony"  that was instrumental in helping attract attention to the renovation project of the Eldridge Street Shul.  The book will also feature photographs of the works in the exhibition and memories of the Orchard Street Shul, with commentary by Karen Schiff.  The innovative book design is by Criscola Design.The Public is Invited to the Opening Reception for the Participating Artists,  on Sunday, December 6, from 12:00 Noon to 5:00 pm.    To set the mood for the launch of “The Orchard Street Shul Artists Cultural Heritage Project”, the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale for Jewish Life at Yale will host a Jazz jam session on December 5 at 7:30, celebrating the swing dance music of 1924 and beyond, when the cornerstone of this Synagogue was put in place in a ceremony attended by Mayor Fitzgerald and much of the entire New Haven community.The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art is open W-F, 11:00 am to 4:00 pm, and weekends 2:00 pm  to 5:00 pm.  Schools and other organizations who would like to arrange a group visit outside of regular hours may do so by sending an email to: [email protected].

take a picture of me for my myspace

In October of 2006 my rabbi started blogging. While trying to comment on one of his posts, I accidentally registered my own blog. Within hours of posting a comment, my name began appearing in Google searches. I was now linked to the post I had commented on, previous posts my rabbi had written, comments left by other users and the posts they had written elsewhere within the blogosphere. The rapidity with which I was branded, not only by my own online activity, but also by the online activity of others, seemed incomprehensible.I thought about this phenomenon in relationship to, the images that my friends and I had posted on Myspace throughout that year. I unknowingly went from being slightly annoyed and simultaneously amused by the phrase "take a picture of me for my Myspace", to it becoming completely natural and almost organic to document every moment, every outing, every time my friends and I put on make up, and to take pictures for Myspace. I saw this behavior even further exaggerated in the high school students I was student teaching. Their conversations were dominated with events that had transpired on Myspace, and when they were not talking about Myspace they were taking pictures for Myspace.When we talked about the factors that contributed to the construction of their individual and collective identities, my students were quick to bring up their style of dress, group of friends, the neighborhood they lived in, and the way they spoke. Yet not a single student referenced their online activity, the pictures they posted, the groups they joined, the comments they left on each others pages. I wondered why it was, that they were so aware of and adept at reflecting upon their experiences in the material offline world, but failed to mention the social network that played such a major role in their day-to-day lives.DECONSTRUCTING PERSONAL IDENTITY(today) I am referring to myself as a performance artist, Internet curator, and editor.  I create and (concurrently) perform multiple online identities, by sampling from different representations of existing cultural discourses. I fragment my personal experiences and invite  others to join in, and modify and regroup those fragments. By doing this I hope to share the process through which I  deconstruct and reconstruct my individual conception of self, so that others can do the same in their lives.In the series Acciones Plásticas I performed representations of five constructed characters: a religious Jewish woman, a spoiled Jewish girl, a ghetto Latina, a sexy Latina professor, and a Mayan woman. I created low quality YouTube video blogs for four of the characters, the Mayan woman did not have a video, as she would not have had access to YouTube technologies. The videos were strategically placed on popular social networking sites, including YouTube and MySpace. The layout of YouTube contextualized the videos and framed them with user comments and similarly tagged user content. Jewish Girls was picked up by a popular left-wing Jewish blogging site Jewschool, and soon entered the Jewish Blogosphere where it was referred to as the JAP. This repositioning shifted the focus from the portrayal of multiple interwoven identities to a depiction of the Jewish American Princess. The JAP became how people knew my work, validating me while simultaneously conflating my identity with that of this particular character.One of the strategies that I employed to counteract idea of "me as The JAP" was to group videos from the series  Acciones Plásticas together with three other Youtube videos in a video reel of my work. The first video in the reel,  el es frida kahlo is me dressed as Frida Kahlo where I violently scream I am Frida Kahlo! In second video Be Wife, I wear a bright red bikini top in front of an image of a Mayan temple in Tikal. Traditional Guatemalan marimba music plays in the background, while red text scrolls across the top reading Guatemala's finest export. The third video Que Sencilla, features me as a little girl, who is being coaxed by an off-camera male voice to perform a dance for the camera.Someone who is expecting to see a Jewish American Princess, is instead greeted with an enraged Latina artist, trying to fight the stigma of being associated with Frida Kahlo. My inclusion of these additional videos was to show the multidimensionality of the five characters initially presented in Acciones Plásticas. The Mayan women does not have her own YouTube video, but with the addition of the Be Wife video, her absence is felt even greater. The face of Guatemala in these videos, is the chest of a mail order bride. Another example can be seen within the four original videos themselves. With the grouping of the ghetto latina with the sexy latina professor, vast cultural and class difference can be seen between the two representations of Latina women. Put together with el es frida kahlo and Be Wife, there are suddenly five Latina performers all acting on one stage.

Jewish Girls Youtube Comments

Jewish Girls from the series Acciones Plásticas

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBjBN0ftcP0]Responses to Jewish Girls

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQphBV2Q0ZE]

Frida Kahlo at the synagogue: Maya Escobar

Frida Kahlo at the synagogue: Maya Escobar and the young Jewish-American Creationby David Sperber in Ma'arav Israeli Arts and Culture Magazine.translation by Shlomit NehoraiARTICLE IN SPANISH & HEBREWMaya Escobar is no doubt one of the 'hottest' things developing in the Jewish-American art scene. Escobar defines herself "dyslexic internet artist". And in order to view her work you need not wander far.Her work is mostly created in familiar internet format, and is most often displayed on Youtube. Escobar, daughter to a Jewish mother and Guatemalan father, defines her art work as ongoing personal anthropological-sociological research into the narrative language that uses contemporary media.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3li_mT--f-A]The "Acciones Plasticas" work includes short films that present a series of convincing characters and monologues that deal with identity questions. In the first short film in the series she appears dressed up as the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo who became an icon within the feminist discourse. it is commonly argued that Kahlo had some Jewish roots. Escobar is dressed and made up as is famously attributed to Kahlo - the uni brow - while screaming "I am Frida Kahlo, you are Frida Kahlo, we are Frida Kahlo". In agitation or in ecstasy she tears her custom, messes up her hair, wipes her make up off of her face and returns to being herself. In another short film in the series she carries on with a monologue of a jewish orthodox woman. The text here is so exact that for a minute the line between irony and slapstick to deep seriousness is blurred. In another short film the stereotypical Latin female as a sexual sensual object is presented, when here too the subject is moving between embracing the stereotypes and breaking them. Escobar is presenting different episodes that she had experienced herself and that deal with her hybrid identity as a woman, as a Jew and as a Latin American.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNAxEUEE43Y]

Another work of Escobar is  "my shtreimel" - a video-blog that is also presented on Youtube.In that piece appears a young man in his twentieths who sits in his room in front of a computer and talk about his Shabbat rituals. The monologue describes an amorphous jewish world in which jewishness lives and materializes without obligation to its institutions and mostly in personal frameworks. A central part in this world is self deprecation: The young man shows his beloved shtreimel and mentions that the shtreimel which looks like the traditional  is actually a women's hat purchased at a thrift store.

In the work "eruv"  (intermingling)  Escobar relates to the fact that in Berlin there is no eruv even though there exists a vibrant jewish community. In a series of photographed interviews with the city's citizens she transforms the notion eruv - from a halachic-legal notion that creates a conversion of the public space into the private space, into a blending - the creation of a multiple of characters and worlds. The blending (eruv)transforms into a cultural concept that celebrates the different and the unique. The individuals create a splendid mosaic that assembles anew the "collective" as a social concept. The way Escobar deals with the subject is typical to the jewish-american art world that tends to transfer concepts from the practical halachic and transfer them to another world, and so they transform into a metaphor of the personal or social condition. The personal experience is significant to Escobar: " Like other jewish rituals, the Shabbat encompasses practicalities that materialize private condition in a private space. Except that the understanding of the private space and the public space is fluid and changes at all times. I think that it is very important that people celebrate their Shabbat as a pleasant experience, defined and personal. The Shabbat rituals evolve all the time  - not as an unbending obligation that is transferred from generation to generation, but as a result of a simple choice of the individual to create to him/herself nice and pleasant Shabbat customs. We all have these kind of customs."The intercontinental use of the Internet gave birth to a generation of individuals who create for creation's sake, and the concept of art for art's sake gets that way a new meaning. The Internet media connects individuals and contributes to mutual influences between people who work separately in far away places. The young work on the Internet challenges the old definitions in relation to what is considered art and what isn't. Similarly, it adopts new presentation forms that are not the norm in the art world's mainstream, and breathes new air into the art field.The discussion into Escobar's work leads into a wider discussion about the differences between the Jewish thinking in the Israeli discourse into the new understanding of the American world view. The Jewish-artistic engagement in the United States is influenced by the introduction of new-age ideas into the center of the conversation, and is integrating into the effort to create a connection between contemporary culture and the traditional Jewish identity. Within the American-Jewish community there are signs of a move from an organized institutional Jewish expression into a unique and personal expression of the very personal experience. These artists reorganizing the traditions on their own terms, and in this way contributing not insignificantly to the definition of Jewish-American Non-Orthodox Modern-orthodox anew. The link between Jewish culture and Jewish identity to art occupies a central role in this conversation.The echoes of this tendency can be seen in Israel as well ( in the young Yiddish culture developing in Tel Aviv, for instance ), but generally there is still a deep disconnect between the dominant concepts in Israel and in the United States. In Israel it is common to connect between Judaism to an organized tradition and to a blood line that is based on a genetic continuity. On the other hand, many young Jewish-Americans marry outside their religion, but nevertheless see themselves as an integral part of the Jewish world and expect to not be expelled from it. As opposed to Israelis who experience their Jewishness in terms of disintegration that followed restoration, the Jewish-Americans create new branches where growth and rebirth metaphors fit them better.The joining of contemporary culture and art to Jewish creativity expresses itself in fashionable characteristics like tattoos, hip-hop music, Internet art and the like, and is often understood as the disconnect with the accepted binary dichotomy between holly and the common. That is why conservative bodies see these art forms as a dangerous provocation. These new cultural concepts interconnect during confrontational discussions with the old cultural concepts. Philologically speaking it can be said that borrowing symbols from one discipline to another interferes with the semiotic systems. In the Kabalistic vernacular it is said that the energy that is released during the friction that is created by the disintegration of the usual vessels - creates  "new light".

1000 Rabbis Call On Obama

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ7Km7SEZ70]Time to Choose PeaceA Rabbinic Letter to President-Elect Barack ObamaRabbis, Cantors, and Jewish clerical students:Join your colleagues in urging President-elect Obama to make resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a top priority of the incoming administration by signing on to the statement below.Current List of SignersFrequently Asked Questions (FAQs)DONATE to support media campaign around the letterSigner DisclaimerNOT A RABBI OR CANTOR? CLICK HERE

Text of the Letter

We the undersigned, call on you, President-elect Obama, to pledge to make resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a top priority of your Administration.While you come into office with a long list of problems before you, the long-simmering conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is among the most urgent. After eight years of half-hearted diplomacy, there is no time left to walk softly and hope for the best.The consequences of failing to establish a durable peace are grim. The influence of Iran and Hezbollah would grow among an increasingly bitter Palestinian population, and extremists would have further excuse to do vicious battle with the West. It is difficult to calculate the damage that a downward spiral into fresh waves of violence could hold.American Presidents traditionally look to the Jewish community for insight on Israel-related policy. As Jewish clergy, we pledge to mobilize our people behind your leadership for a mutually-acceptable, two-state solution. We pledge to support you through difficult, trying times, and to celebrate with you when the job is done. We pledge to let the American public know: An American President who dedicates himself to the establishment of a durable Israeli-Palestinian peace acts in the best interests of Israel and the United States.* We call on you to dedicate yourself to the establishment of a viable Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel early in your first term.* We call on you to appoint, within your first 100 days in office, a high-level, highly-regarded envoy to the region, an individual who has the ear of both Israelis and Palestinians, the respect of the American people, and ready access to your Oval Office.* We call on you to establish mechanisms of enforcement and follow-through, so that decisions made and agreements signed will be respected and brought to fruition.

Signed by:[Your name][Your address]

Negotiating Diaspora Identities Through New Media

Join PhD Anthropology Candidate Eric Repice and MFA Candidate Maya Escobar in a brown bag lunch discussion concerning transnational, transcultural, and hybrid negotiations of identity through new media.How do these discussions vary between our fields?Eric Repicefor more information on Eric Repice visit http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~esrepice/homefor more information on Maya Escobar visit http://mayaescobar.com[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3li_mT--f-A][youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-GDmDcSH4g][youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whLYM9o946w][youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz2fhmRzCOA][youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14bv0-dzMIc][youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNAxEUEE43Y]

Sarah Silverman for Obama

[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=AgHHX9R4Qtk]

caminante no hay camino

There is one specific image that I have never been able to remove from my mind: an image of a Guatemalan solider pointing a gun at the belly of a young pregnant woman. Ironically, I have no recollection as to the source of that specific image. Part of me wonders if that image even existed, or if it was a confabulation of my youth, created in response to the countless stories of political massacre in Guatemala that my father described to me on a regular basis.The Power of ImageRecently I attended a symposium on Architecture, Art and the Experience of Blackness, where I was greatly moved by the words of Hamza Walker, who serves as the Director of Education and Associate Curator for the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago.In an effort to outline “blackness” or the “black experience”, Walker alluded to the profound impact of the publication of the casket-side Emmett Till photos in JET magazine.The Till incident began with the brutal beating and murder of an 11yr old boy, whose only crime was whistling at a white woman. In a surprisingly high profile trial the two men accused were almost immediately acquitted by an all white jury. The boy’s grieving mother insisted on an open casket funeral so that the world could see what had happened to her beloved son.Walker said, that the media transmission of these transgressions confirmed the collective understanding shared by African Americans that this treatment was the reality of the judicial system. If they were to ever “compromise the integrity of a white woman” what happened to Till would happen to them.Is exposure to explicit images of human brutality the proper way to insure that these incidents do not repeat themselves?How many times have we seen the same iconographic holocaust pictures?But do we know who is in these images and what is taking place?Has seeing the same images a million times done anything the stop the Iraq war or prevent genocide in Darfur?Perhaps the issue comes down to the dissemination of information to young people. Without providing a proper context for the interpretation and dialogue surrounding these explicit images, the depicted incidents become far removed from our lives, and we become numb to their reality.Why a Coloring Book?Coloring Books, emerged in the United States a part of the movement towards the “democratization of education”. They are commonly utilized in popular education models as, accessible teaching tools for often illiterate audiences.This coloring book provides the platform for the introduction and the critical re-evaluation of social movements the context in which they occurred, and the individuals who have preserved and made a major impacts upon the world.

video reel

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3li_mT--f-A&hl=en]

Joanna Angel: Jews & Tattoos

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9laK9l_lq0&hl=en]

• Adult film superstar Joanna Angel pokes holes at the myth that Jewish faith won't allow you to go to heaven if you have tattoos -- and Joanna's got quite a few -- during the Wild Ass Circus' trip to Las Vegas for the 2008 AVN Awards