"Blindfolded" part of the "Surviving Genocide" series by Raquel Partnoy

Sixteen years ago, when I moved to the United States, I felt that its English language was a kind of shelter which I could use to write on the terror my family and many others had endured during the seven years of dictatorship in Argentina: disappearances, torture, killing at the hands of a terrorist state. This new language has given me the necessary physical and psychological distance to be able to write about what I had experienced during that time. Writing essays, poems, and my book length narrative poem City of Red Horizons, made me concentrate more on the English grammar than on my feelings.

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I have been nourished by three languages and cultures. My mother’s Yiddish tongue and the Jewish traditions she brought with her to Argentina awakened my love to read Jewish writers and learn about her world as well as to understand more about her sad memories. Argentina was the country her family had chosen when they escaped the horrors of Czarist Russia, I grew up there, and the Spanish language enriched my life through the magnificent Latin American and Spain’s authors. I have memories of myself, an already avid reader at fourteen, going to my city’s bookstores to buy affordable editions of novels by well-known authors. For years I kept that collection which I regarded as my treasure. Later in my life, the English Language allowed me to read the original works of great poets, and also testimonies of Holocaust survivors. As I began to read those testimonies, I noticed many similarities in procedures between the genocide committed during the Holocaust and that perpetrated by the military dictatorship in Argentina. I decided to unify both subjects and paint the series Surviving Genocide. At the same time I wrote an essay on the same subject.

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Early in my career I used to paint landscapes of Bahía Blanca, my hometown in Argentina. Although I draw large human figures on paper, I had not yet thought about including them in my oil paintings. So it was not by chance that in 1976 small figures began to appear at the doors, windows, and skies of my cityscapes. That was precisely the year when Argentina began to experience one of the cruelest chapters of its history. A military coup took place; thirty thousand people disappeared and were eventually massacred by the government.

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When my daughter disappeared and my son felt in a state of depression I thought that I would need more than single works to picture what was going on in my country at that time. I began working on series of paintings and also writing essays on the subjects of those paintings that later were included in the catalogs of my exhibits. The figures would grow larger on my canvases and became the main characters of my work. It took me several years to produce the first series of paintings where I was able to start expressing my experience. However, later I realized much had gone unexpressed in those paintings, and then I began writing poems inspired by each of them. It was a sort of dialogue between the image I had in front of me and my memory.

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The voices of the authors who have experienced injustice, or worry about it, like Adrianne Rich, Silvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, Muriel Rukeyser, Whitman, among others, have been the forces that encouraged me to write and tell the story of my family, which is a part of the saddest chapter of my country’s history.

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Lately, I have started to “translate” my poems to Spanish and this is a very different story. It is not the same thing writing “would they leave my daughter safe on the streets?” than: ¿dejarían ellos libre a mi hija por las calles? or “make them disappear” than “hacerlos desaparecer.” I deeply feel the weight of the Spanish words, they are heavier and more painful than the English ones. While switching from one language to the other I feel that my Jewish roots, and the experience of my ancestors, are always alive in my writings.

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Although I have devoted most of my years to painting, I believe that both painting and writing have always been the engines that gave me the strength to keep on living and to survive.

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Raquel Partnoy is an Argentine painter, poet, and essayist who has lived in Washington, D.C. since1994. Her solo exhibits in this city include: Parish Gallery; B'nai B'rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum; Embassy of Argentina; D.C. Jewish Community Center; Studio Gallery. Her work has been featured in: Arte al Día-Documenta 87 - La Plástica Norteamericana; The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women's Anthology; Religious Imagination and the Body: A Feminist Analysis; CALYX, a Journal of Art and Literature by Women US. Her essays have been published in Women Writing Resistance-Essays on Latin American and the Caribbean; The Jewish Diaspora in Latin American and the Caribbean: Fragments of Memory. Her narrative poem City of Red Horizons will be published in Argentina in 2011. Please see more of her poetry at her blog City of Red Horizons and her artwork at her blog Pintores Argentinos. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

                                            "Clamor" by Raquel Partnoy

My grandparents were Russian-Jewish immigrants who settled in Argentina in 1913, shortly before World War I. They decided to leave their country because of Czarist persecution and discrimination against the Jewish people, and also because of the Army, into which Jewish boys were drafted never to return to their homes.

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My parents were not able to pack many of their belongings when they left Russia, but they did bring a samovar, a mandolin and a sewing machine. In their new country they began to rebuild their lives, always preserving their traditions, language and cultural heritage. The samovar came to my home with all the family memories and I decided to preserve them in my paintings.

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When I painted the series “From Life,” “Life’s Windows,” and “The Brides,” I used all those old photos to portray the negative and positive aspects of life. From then on I could never separate life from art. My series “Life’s Experiences” is related to the dictatorship in Argentina when more than 30,000 people “disappeared.” Many youth who believed in justice were arrested, tortured and eventually killed by the authorities. In that series I tell of my own pain for the disappearance and later imprisonment of my daughter.

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After that I produced the series “Clothes.” By painting clothes without people I portrayed the life my only son, who suffered depression during those horrible years, until he could not bear it anymore and committed suicide.

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Between Two Skies

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In my city of red horizon that trap the winds

and shelter the wings of monsters,

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where a white salt marsh bars the land from bearing fruit,

and the tamarisk bush houses fear,

there are people who envision new skies to keep on living.

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In my city of windows blurred by the dust of indifference

and the gray complicity of silence,

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where streets have kept the indelible prints of the angel of death,

prints of genocidal boots,

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there are people who vanish from earth,

yet were never allowed to meet new skies.

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In my city of gloomy parks, where churches are siblings

to the killer crows, to terror,

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where outrageous spokespersons, poison the air

and break all dreams that sprout anew,

there are people who never chose to live under new skies.

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Portrait of My Mother

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A violet light falls over my mother’s face, or

it is she who radiates this light.

Her dilated pupils look into infinity, maybe at

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the life – the ghosts, she left behind.

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On the ochre wall of the kitchen, a blue shadow

emphasizes her Semitic profile,

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and her expressive features are framed by her white

hair – with a wave on her forehead.

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We all sit around the table, she is under the clock

whose tick - tock accompanies her voice.

She speaks in Spanish , although it is mixed with

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some Yiddish the children understand.

The story starts –and she is a good storyteller– when

she was a child in her Russian hometown.

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Her eyes smile, she remembers her life with her eight

siblings in the house near the river.

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The laughter of the girls when the brothers,

who under the water, caught their legs by surprise.

And, in the winters, their sliding on the frozen river,

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playing together, always sharing their happiness.

The family’s joy as they painted the walls,

and prepared special dishes for their Jewish celebrations.

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All those lively noises while making food

they stored in the basement for the cold seasons.

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But this colorful landscape darkens, she recalls when

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young boys were forcefully taken by the army

and never again they returned home.

Pogroms, houses in flames, death, Cossacks fiercely shouting:

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Jews go away ! Go away !

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My mother remains silent in the corner of my kitchen,

her words still floating in the air.

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* these are fragments of a larger narrative on her blog, City of Red Horizons

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Thank you for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Raquel Partnoy, Guest Blogger

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Raquel Partnoy is an Argentine painter, poet, and essayist who has lived in Washington, D.C. since1994. Her solo exhibits in this city include: Parish Gallery; B'nai B'rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum; Embassy of Argentina; D.C. Jewish Community Center; Studio Gallery. Her work has been featured in: Arte al Día-Documenta 87 - La Plástica Norteamericana; The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women's Anthology; Religious Imagination and the Body: A Feminist Analysis; CALYX, a Journal of Art and Literature by Women US. Her essays have been published in Women Writing Resistance-Essays on Latin American and the Caribbean; The Jewish Diaspora in Latin American and the Caribbean: Fragments of Memory. Her narrative poem City of Red Horizons will be published in Argentina in 2011. Please see more of her poetry at City of Red Horizons and her artwork at Pintores Argentinos. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

"Dialogue 17"

Dov Lederberg

There is a saying: “You are what you eat”. But perhaps it should be: “You are what you hang up on your walls.”

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Certainly, the quality and direction of a person’s daily visual stimuli must have an influence on his/her mood and can be a springboard to profound spiritual meditation. Although the Judaic tradition is usually thought of as essentially iconoclastic according to a misinterpretation of the precept not to make a “graven image,” there are many areas that are especially appropriate and a source of inspiration for the artist.

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1. The Sacred Letters or the Hebrew letters according to the scribal style that appears

in the Torah scroll.

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2. Meditations and Imaginings on the Jewish Star, the Tree of Life diagram of the sephirot and visions of the Third Temple and Future Jerusalem. (These examples from the work of Yael Avi-Yonah)

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3. Images of the Dialogue-Antilogue series, suggesting through abstract forms and archetypes the intimate relationship between a man and his wife, the most potent kabbalistic metaphor for spiritual connection.

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4. In general, abstract art, or more precisely illusionist or gestalt art, can be become a strong stimulant to meditation, since it invites the active participation of the viewer with the endless possibility of seeing “new things”, thus eliciting multi-layered expansive consciousness.

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5. The use of the Golden Section (Fibonacci series), Cubes and Supercubes, Spiral Helixes and Fractals, all of which are hinted at in Jewish philosophy and in particular

the Kabbalah.

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In the dialogue relating to healing, art and Judaism, there is one perspective that considers illness, particularly the whole range of mental disorders, even normal tension, the result of a constricted consciousness. In the Kabbalah this is called Mitzrayim, the Hebrew name for Egypt, connected to the Hebrew root M-TZ-R, meaning straits and constriction. Mitzrayim implies a “doubled” constriction, that is to say a person who is - perhaps happily - completely unaware of his constricted view of life. The responsibility of the healer is to help deliver his patient from his mental "Egypt" to achieve a new and expansive vision of his life and mission.

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The constricted mundane consciousness is often described in the Kabbalah as the Elo-kim mode, a world ruled only by natural & rational laws. Expansive consciousness is the Yod-Kay-Vav-Kay mode, which implies the Past, the Present and the Future, together and simultaneously, and is the essence of the Jewish religious faith. This mode name is so holy that we substitute in a secular context just the word: HaShem: The Name.

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Art can help in this healing; bring you along from a state of Elo-kim to being closer to The Name. After all, you are what you hang up on your walls.

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Thanks for Reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Dov Lederberg, Guest Blogger

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Dov Lederberg grew up in Philadelphia, and educated at Haverford College, Columbia University (Fine Arts), and baal tsuva yeshivot in Brooklyn & Israel. He was an “underground” filmmaker in the Sixties and, since his aliya to Israel in 1967, a film director for Israel TV and independent. Since 1983, involved with new art mediums (painting and videoart) to visually express Jewish mysticism. His work is exhibited in museums and galleries in Israel and abroad. He and his artist wife, Yael Avi-Yonah, will be in the US between March 8th to April 6th in the greater NYC area, including a solo exhibit at the Great Neck Arts Center (Long Island), opening March 24th and are available for additional lectures and exhibitions. They welcome visits to their Jerusalem studio. View more of the artist's work at his website http://www.art.net/TheGallery/Vision and reach him by email at vision@art.net and phone Tel/fax: 972-2-5611411 - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

"Women in a Sauna" bronze

Artists are often asked to supply an Artist’s Statement in preparation for a gallery showing of their work. My statement, though applied to sculpture, applies also to my writing, and more broadly, might apply to any artist striving to “make sense of it all.”

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Artist’s Statement:

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My work is about people: how they look, how they act; how they endure hardship and celebrate joy; how they find meaning and truth in their lives. The landscape of people is a dramatic terrain, full of vitality, often funny, sometimes sad, but like the weather, always changing. I change too as I try to make sense of it all.

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Artists seem compelled to transfer their thoughts, perceptions and insights to some tangible material. As if the ephemeral nature of these things cannot be contained solely in the mind but must be transferred to object form: from the subjective to the objective and from self to others. Is this sharing of thought, perception and insight generosity or is it self-aggrandizement to believe that others care to receive these pearls of wisdom? I suppose conjecture of this sort is appropriate, but the truth is, the artist doesn’t have a choice. The sad (or brilliant) truth is that keeping it all to oneself is not an option for the artist. Options are cerebral matters. Keeping your options open is adult advice we’ve absorbed since childhood, choosing a college, a major, a career, a job, a mate. Creating art necessitates the cerebral but the process emanates from other sources, from inspection and introspection, from personal and vicarious experiences, from visceral feelings of pain and joy.

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And then there is the compulsion to produce. It is simply not enough to perceive and feel and intuit for these sensual and emotional energies wreak havoc upon you until they are transformed into a material essence that can be looked upon (and, if you are lucky, shared). The artistic process in whatever medium chosen requires physical and mental energy, commitment of time and resources, and priorities. No wonder so many artists end up badly. For all the while the grand rapids of this energy is coursing through you, you must maintain the time, resources and priorities to put it to use. And if you can’t and it tears at you and you’ve run the gambit of pinning your anger on others, you have no recourse but to blame yourself and we all know anger at oneself is the hardest.

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So why do we make art? The rewards offered by the world are few for all the time and resources spent. Recognition is hard to come by and the significant others around you give you no credit for creating pie in the sky when you should be changing the linens. But the printed words, the sculptural images, the choreographed dance, the painted still life emerging on the easel, each is testament to an original something that did not exist before you came on the scene. Indeed, what a life it is while artistic creation is in progress. What a spiritual gift it is to engage in this transference from subjective insight to objective productivity. No matter the energy spent, the resources needed and the every-day duties and luxuries put aside, no artist would choose to give it up.

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Not that they have a choice.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Judith Peck, Ed.D., Guest Blogger

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Judith Peck is a sculptor, author and full professor of art at Ramapo College of New Jersey in Mahwah, NJ. Her sculpture is included in over 80 public and private collections including the Yale Gallery of Art. Recently four over life-size figures, titled “Ladies of Steel,” were displayed on Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in New York. Dr. Peck is the author of several books on artistic activities, including Sculpture as Experience 2nd Edition, most of which are available at www.iapbooks.com.  Her sculpture can be viewed at www.judithpeck.com. Women, from youth through aging, comprise a large component of her sculptural themes. The feature “A Woman’s World” can be viewed at http://www.judithpeck.com/special_exhibit/special_exhibit.html  - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor