At this panel, curators and artists from The Yiddishland Pavilion and KlezKanada will consider the question: What is/why Yiddishland? Featuring Anna Elena Torres, Shterna Goldbloom, Yevgeniy Fiks, Maria Veits, Avia Moore. Jeffrey Shandler, author of
Adventures in Yiddishland and Yiddish: A Biography, will join the panel as a respondent.
The Yiddishland Pavilion, curated by Maria Veits and Yevgeniy Fiks, is the first independent transnational pavilion at the Venice Biennale to bring together artists and scholars who activate Yiddish and the diasporic Jewish discourse in contemporary artistic practice. The Pavilion’s activities—performances, discussions, presentations of new artworks, physical and digital interventions—unfold in Venice and online between April and November 2022 in a dialogue and collaboration with national pavilions of countries with histories of Yiddish-speaking Jewish migration. By placing the Yiddishland Pavilion into the framework of the Venice Biennale and the system of the national pavilions, the project challenges the principle of national division within the biennale. It forces the questions of national representation, selection, and inclusion in the art world into the political domain while also making connections between different art scenes through shared Jewish and Yiddish history. While revisiting traumatic and difficult pasts of the 20th century, the project acts as is platform for context and the critique of the continuing military aggression, imperialism, and colonialism practised by contemporary governments through wars, invasions of sovereign territories, and terror.
Produced in partnership with
KLEZKANADAFee participation charge is $20