{"id":4175,"date":"2017-06-05T14:56:46","date_gmt":"2017-06-05T12:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moked.it\/international\/?p=4175"},"modified":"2017-06-05T14:56:46","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T12:56:46","slug":"culture-he-tends-venices-jewish-history-she-filmed-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moked.it\/international\/2017\/06\/05\/culture-he-tends-venices-jewish-history-she-filmed-him\/","title":{"rendered":"CULTURE He Tends Venice\u2019s Jewish History. She Filmed Him."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"izzo\"<\/a>By Robin Pogrebin*<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are fewer than 500 Jews left in Venice, barely a handful compared with the 5,000 who filled the ghetto here at its height in the 17th century.<\/p>\n

Drawn by this diminishing population, the Israeli artist Hadassa Goldvicht made repeated visits, along the way discovering Aldo Izzo, a former ship captain who for 35 years has been guardian and keeper of the two historical Jewish cemeteries on the Lido in Venice.<\/p>\n

Mr. Izzo, 86, inspired Ms. Goldvicht, 35, to make her next project about him, recording hundreds of hours of footage with Mr. Izzo and Jewish residents around Venice, studying the meticulous illustrations and entries that fill Mr. Izzo\u2019s daily journals. He keeps track of who has died and who remains.<\/p>\n

\u201cI kind of fell in love with him, and I was very occupied with death,\u201d Ms. Goldvicht said in a recent interview. \u201cHe is not afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result is \u201cThe House of Life,\u201d a multiscreen video installation that opened this month at the Palazzo Querini Stampalia Museum in conjunction with the first week of the Venice Biennale. The show, presented by the Israel Museum and Meislin Projects, explores larger themes of a changing city and historical memory through Mr. Izzo\u2019s work caring for and restoring the oldest Jewish cemeteries in Venice, one from 1774, which is still in use, and one from 1386.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really a piece about the dying community of Venice, an allegory about big issues of life and death,\u201d said Amitai Mendelsohn, senior curator of the Israeli Art department at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, who organized the show. \u201cAldo is an intermediary between life and death, a remnant of this Jewish population.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the tombstones \u2014 and sometimes even the contents of the graves \u2014 had been desecrated, damaged or removed, Mr. Izzo has made restoring both graveyards his life\u2019s work. He has hung the broken headstones that were separated from their grave sites around the cemetery\u2019s enclosed border, creating an installation of its own. In one video, he talks about how some of the headstones have a hole at the bottom, where the soul is said to appear when the dead arise.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, the project is not what\u2019s on the wall, but all these conversations,\u201d Ms. Goldvicht said. \u201cHis wife died last year, he\u2019s living alone on the Lido and losing his eyesight, and he\u2019s still going to the cemetery. Aldo is burying the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of like a poem,\u201d she added. \u201cIt\u2019s a reduced version of all of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Goldvicht straddles several subcultures; she comes from a family of Hasidic and rabbinical background and lives in Jerusalem with her husband, Jonatan Benarroch, a kabbalah scholar, with their daughters, ages 2 and 4.<\/p>\n

Yet Ms. Goldvicht is also a product of the art world. Her parents, both filmmakers, lived in New York for three years when she was young. She earned a bachelor of fine arts degree in 2004 from the Rhode Island School of Design and a master\u2019s from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2007. She did an artist residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine in 2008.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy upbringing is complex,\u201d she said. \u201cI have a very private relationship with God. I\u2019m not a person who belongs to a community, but I\u2019m fascinated by community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel complete where I am,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

A solo exhibition by Ms. Goldvicht, a chapter of \u201cThe House of Life,\u201d will open on June 15 at Meislin Projects on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.<\/p>\n

The Israel Museum in 2012 presented Ms. Goldvicht\u2019s video installation \u201cLullaby,\u201d which features people at the museum \u2014 from the director to the security guards \u2014 singing their childhood lullabies. \u201c\u2018Lullaby\u2019 is one of the works that\u2019s really worth lingering over,\u201d the Israeli newspaper Haaretz said in its review of the show. \u201cThe work took over 50 hours, and deals with memory and vulnerability. Some of the singers waver and seem to be cradling themselves while they sing, momentarily returning to childhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

More recently, in Venice, Ms. Goldvicht said, \u201cI don\u2019t draw or paint,\u201d adding, \u201cI kind of feel the materials I work with are life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe House of Life\u201d started in 2013 as an exploration of Jewish residents in Venice. Ms. Goldvicht was an artist in residence then at Beit Venezia, formerly the Venice Center for International Jewish Studies. Her research led her to Mr. Izzo. Last year Venice commemorated 500 years of Jewish life in the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope this work is kind of a prayer,\u201d she said. \u201cDiscussion about fear, and mix between art and life. It\u2019s mixed. It\u2019s messy.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, Mr. Mendelsohn emphasized, \u201cThe House of Life\u201d is \u201cnot a documentary.\u201d In addition to videos, the show features framed excerpts from Mr. Izzo\u2019s journals and photographs of his cluttered shelves.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an art piece,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The focus on Mr. Izzo was a way of \u201cnarrowing it down to something that is personal and universal,\u201d he added, \u201chistorical and mythical.\u201d<\/p>\n

*The article was published in The New York Times on May 30, 2017. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Robin Pogrebin* There are fewer than 500 Jews left in Venice, barely a handful compared with the 5,000 who filled the ghetto here at its height in the 17th century. Drawn by this diminishing population, the Israeli artist Hadassa Goldvicht made repeated visits, along the way discovering Aldo Izzo, a former ship captain who… leggi <\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4296,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9316],"tags":[],"position":[],"class_list":["post-4175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nCULTURE He Tends Venice\u2019s Jewish History. 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