Artist calls for salvation in show at Bat Yam museum
Ester Schneider salvages furniture legs and arms to create tabernacles and a sukkah in her solo exhibit, ‘Hoshana’
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
The spiral surroundings of the Bat Yam Museum of Art are hosting artist Ester Schneider in her first solo museum exhibit, “Hoshana,” which showcases her installations, paintings and watercolors.
“Hoshana,” a prayerful entreaty translated as “Save us,” is open through June 15 at the museum that its staff like to call the “mini Guggenheim,” after the renowned New York museum, with its own spiral staircase.
Schneider draws from a well of cultural influences, as the daughter of a religious family that immigrated from Russia when she was still very young, with a father who was deeply engaged in Jewish thought, and as someone now involved in Jewish mysticism.
She dives into the world of Jewish ritual, often with rainbow colors, as she employs a vibrant color palette not always viewed in contemporary art.
“It’s hard in the last year and a half to make and show art,” said curator Hila Cohen-Schneiderman. “Ester has, and she calls for salvation.”
Schneider’s thoughts and ideas about salvation vary and aren’t always clear in every work in this expansive exhibit. Still, she has created a host of ritual objects, including a type of tabernacle, a seat for Elijah, a staircase reminiscent of Jacob’s biblical dream, and a sukkah made of furniture arms and palm fronds.
She regularly salvages the curved arms and legs of furniture, using them as the base for her pieces that she often tops with large-scale watercolor paintings.
Much of her artwork feels tied to October 7 and the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel’s south, where some 1,200 were killed and 251 taken captive.
The attack took place on Simchat Torah, the last day of the Sukkot holiday, at the time of year when the hoshana prayers are recited, with willow branches held during prayer.
Schneider harkens to those prayers in “Hoshana” with several types of tabernacle installations, some with willow branches that are tied to the sides and base of each piece.
The first gallery in the museum’s entrance also offers the feel of a synagogue, a space for ritual, with each piece complementing the next.
Schneider said she is moved by different elements, whether mystical prayers or flowers that grow out of local sidewalks. Her Elijah’s chair is framed by paintings of flowers that form a menorah on one side, and Moses’s bush on the other.
She gathered dry leaves to create a stencil on another piece, her sky-blue “The Rainbow” painting that tops “Sky Floor,” made from more salvaged furniture legs, with the arched, large-scale watercolor tapestry forming the top of the piece.
In the upstairs section of the museum, where one extended circular gallery surrounds the spiral staircase, the walls are hung with 24 watercolors on paper, and then more of Schneider’s sculptural pieces. The watercolors are fantastical, in bold, vibrant shades.
“Drawing is like meditation for me,” said Schneider, who described her process as working until she stops and sees what it is.
Some of the sculptural pieces, like one piece that appears to be a giant shoe, or “Raphaella,” made from smooth chair legs and peacock feathers, don’t necessarily feel like they connect to the larger exhibit.
But a central piece is a sukkah, made from salvaged furniture legs, some fashioned like hands holding palm fronds, which offer a heart-stopping reminder of the central tent at the Nova desert rave, and for the sukkah dwellings where residents of the southern kibbutz communities ate holiday dinners on October 6, before the Hamas massacre.
Schneider said she also thought of the sukkah as a place of gathering, whether for mourners or others, a place where people can support one another.
“Ester invents a language,” said Cohen-Schneiderman. “She takes things apart and puts them back together.”
Schneider, who was born in Moscow and raised in the Chabad community in Jerusalem before the family moved to the national religious community, studied art at Bezalel, first graphic art and then drawing.
At the end of the tour, Schneider showed a deck of cards based on her exhibited watercolors, having created a kind of game in which players look at the picture and offer a suggestion of what it looks like to them.
The decks of cards are for sale in the museum gift shop.
In the world of Ester Schneider, each image can become almost anything.
