The G-D Project of Helène Aylon: Visual Art as a Means for Transmitting and Subverting Jewish Text

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

This roundtable is a discussion of the work of Helène Aylon, a Jewish feminist visual artist most known for the iconic work that originated in the Jewish Museum, "The Liberation of G-d." Aylon’s work challenges gendered theological conventions and interrogates their relationship to the construction of Jewish women’s identities. Aylon uses the visual to challenge the textual. In so doing she invites questions about how Jewishly inflected art can both transmit and subvert Jewish traditions. Aylon will present slides and give a gallery talk. The work and its impact will be discussed by a panel of Jewish feminist scholars and art critics.


The work of Helène Aylon forms the basis for this roundtable discussion. Aylon is a visual, conceptual, and installation artist and eco-feminist whose work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum and the Jewish Museum in New York, the Aldrich Museum in Connecticut, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Berkeley Art Museum, the American University Museum in DC, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.
Her memoir, Whatever is Contained Must Be Released: My Jewish Orthodox Girlhood, My Life as a Feminist Artist was published by The Feminist Press in 2012

Sub Unit

• Jews, Film, and the Arts

Moderator

• Deborah J. Glanzberg-Krainin, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College

Discussants

• Sally A. Gottesman, Moving Traditions

• Lori Hope Lefkovitz, Northeastern University

• Vanessa Ochs, University of Virginia

• Helene Aylon, Author / Artist