The Contemporary Jewish Museum (The CJM) is now presenting Nicki Green: Firmament, the transgender and transdisciplinary artist’s first solo museum exhibition. In this presentation, Green explores identity, transformation, and Jewish tradition through artworks that invoke imagery of fermentation, Jewish ritual, mycelium, and more. Bringing together new and existing works, the exhibition includes large-scale sculptures, fiber works, ritual objects, and drawings. It is on view through February 2, 2025.
Green’s inspiration for this exhibition comes from the concept of the firmament—a thin dome or expanse referenced in the Book of Genesis that divides the earth from the heavens. This form of separation in the Torah offers Green a reference to imagine an architectural object that functions as a sanctuary for in-between states of being and thinking, and an environment of warmth, welcome, and liberation for trans and nonbinary bodies.
The central sculpture appears as a large tent-like structure situated in the center of the gallery and frames several of the large-scale clay works on view. In addition to the firmament, the structure is inspired by descriptions of the biblical mishkan or tabernacle—a portable sanctuary constructed by the Jewish people to represent God’s earthly domain while in exile. The “skin” of the tent—a sculpture made by Green’s longtime collaborator, artist Ricki Dwyer—is woven to reach up to the heavens, while also anchoring and sheltering the artworks and bodies in the space.
A large vessel situated in the middle of the tent symbolizes a mikvah (the Jewish ritual bath), a space from which queer and trans bodies have traditionally been excluded. Under and surrounding this canopy, multi-headed androgynous figures, presented as angels, luxuriate and co-mingle amongst reinvented ritual objects, including wash basins and ornamental fermentation vessels. Despite their mass and heft, the sculptures in the exhibition also communicate a sense of mobility, with many displayed atop their own travel and storage crates. Green’s emphasis on portability throughout this exhibition positions diaspora—the dispersion of a people from their place of origin and across regions—as a core tenet of her lived Jewish experience.
“Green’s work with clay, and her process of shaping it into new forms, is analogous to the shaping and interpretation of religion,” said Senior Curator Heidi Rabben. “Many religions have left a void for gender non-conforming and other marginalized communities. Green demonstrates how new space and a sense of belonging can be intentionally reinvented and created.”
Green has had a longstanding interest in fermentation and mushrooms, drawing on them as visual cues for resiliency, constant states of transformation, and metaphors for her trans and Jewish identities. These interests play out thematically throughout the exhibition, with motifs of mushrooms and mycelium decorating the ceramic vessels, many of which reference containers used for the fermentation process.
These metaphors all center on processes of transformation or metamorphosis including elements of destruction, resilience, and regeneration, ideas that have also informed Jewish thinking and practice for thousands of years. These ideas are further underscored by a new text piece written by local Maggid and queer elder Eli Andrew Ramer that wraps around the walls of the gallery enveloping all of these objects in a metaphorical embrace. By reclaiming elements of her Jewish upbringing, reinventing functional uses and forms of ceramic objects, and reimagining ways of being, Green challenges and expands the binary limits of contemporary society.
The exhibition is presented concurrently with a solo exhibition Eye of the Fountain at local gallery, CULT: Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, which offers a complementary take on the artist’s rich oeuvre. There, the entire gallery is contextually engaged as a mikvah, inviting visitors to look downwards, which conceptually complements the elevated objects and themes presented in Firmament.
About Nicki Green
A former longtime Bay Area resident, Green received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and MFA from UC Berkeley before settling in New York where she is currently Assistant Professor of Ceramics at Alfred University. Green has exhibited internationally, including at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.; La Biennale de Lyon, Lyon, France; the New Museum, New York; and Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, France. Green is a 2022 Tiffany Foundation Award Winner, a 2022 Nancy Graves Foundation Grantee, and a 2020 ART MATTERS fellow. https://www.thecjm.org/
Arts & Entertainment
Published on September 19, 2024
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