Designist Dream

While I don’t consider myself a jet setter, a family fun-filled affair has me visiting NY for all of 36 hours. So while I’m drinking my coffee and watching the snow melt off the traffic on Broadway, I thought of the millions of other transplanted Israelis who make their way to NY every year - and then decided to hunt down some who came for artistic reasons (not just to move furniture or hock Dead Sea products at the mall.)

I came across the Six Points Fellowship which, through the support of the Foundation for Jewish Culture, AvodaArts and JDub Records and the UJA Federation of New York, provides 12 New York-based artists with two-year fellowships. Projects range in artistic media from performance arts, music and visual arts. Many of the fringe variety with commentaries on social, political, gender and personal issues. But the work of Ethiopian-born Israeli artist (Yagnanyu) Avishai Mekonen really stood out from among the pack, especially since it reached beyond geographic or contemporary boundaries.

An award winning documentary filmmaker and photographer, Mekonen addresses the multi-faceted social and cultural challenges facing Ethiopian Jews as they migrate from country to country and from generation to generation. His Seven Generations project, “creates a living commentary on the contemporary state of Ethiopian Jews’ assimilation juxtaposed against what is being lost with the passing of older generations.” Oral traditions and history are reframed within a photographic documentation of history and tradition as Mekonen questions the loss of the old and the acquisition of the new. The addition of the sounds of prayers, music and counting in Amharic then enhance the juxtaposition of historical, traditional, visual versus aural/oral, today versus yesteryear. I made it sound quite deep but check out the photographs for yourself; they’re very powerful and startling. They also speak for themselves, if you’re not interested in my ramblings…

More about Mekonen’s film can be found here and more about Ethiopian history and culture available from the non-profit advocacy group the Israel Association for Ethiopian Jewry.