“Don’t touch”
“Don’t touch” is what we often heard as children, but as adults we take responsibility for it. Touch Is To Enter Intimate, To Choose... or simply leave a mark of your own passage!.
In Judaism, the burial takes place as soon as possible after death. Before that, the body is ritually washed, wrapped in simple linen clothes and buried in an earthen grave. The funeral ceremony consists of the recitation of Psalms and prayers, which also includes Kaddish. It is also common for relatives to tear their clothes as an expression of their grief.
This custom goes back to the Hebrew Bible: Jacob tears his clothes when he learns of the death of his son Joseph. David and his men tear their clothes at the death of Saul and Jonathan. Also in the Talmud there is a discussion about the circumstances under which the clothes are to be torn.
The mystical-kabbalistic tradition states that the body can be compared to clothing for the soul. When a person dies, the soul takes off its physical clothing and passes into a spiritual sphere in which such garments are not necessary. Accordingly, the torn clothing is a sign that the essence of the soul continues to exist, even after the physical body disintegrates.
In our temporary exhibition "In the Face of Death" you can see a dress with a tear on the collar, which Anastasia from Frankfurt provided us with:
"I wore this dress at my father's funeral and during the week of the Zhivah sitting. The tear on the left side to the heart reflects the feeling that I have felt since that moment due to the death of my father. It's a crack that never goes away. A crack that cuts deep into the heart and changes it forever. I find the symbolism very apt. Because even if you tried to sew the dress, the place would still be visible. Likewise, the loss is always a part of me and there is no way to eliminate this pain.”
The Israeli artist and musician Avi Albers ben Chamo shows us an artistic recording of the Kriah ritual. He lives and works in Berlin, some of you may also know him as a member of the Iranian-Israeli band "Sistanagila".
In his work "Kriah", which was recently on display at the Wallraff Richartz Museum in Cologne, he addresses his experiences of personal rejection after the massacre of 7. October 2023 in Israel: "Kriah is a work on canvas that represents the old biblical custom of 'tearing', usually as an act of mourning for the death of a relative, but sometimes also as a reaction to a shocking event. In this case, it is the events of the past year in Israel and the reactions in the world. After the events of the 7. In October, some of my friends from Berlin broke off contact with my wife and me. Kriah is my reaction to the loss of friendship with those I thought were my friends.”
#hope
Vandalism and hope
As much as Touch is about dialog, last week I got an email from the exhibition space to inform me that the work was vandalized. Someone took the freedom not to just touch the work but to write on it with a black marker, and to insult me with very "juicy" words. It was the last thing I was expecting to happen.
I thought the gallery was a safe place, and this was my main downer, belly pain, a sudden violent mental and emotional pain. But that happily diminished while talking to a lot of my friends, supporting and giving me love and advice. Yesterday I brought two chairs to the group exhibition, one for me and one for the person who did it, I left the work on the wall and waited. I still believe in it "True dialogue can be achieved only at a touch distance".
Vandalismus und Nazi-Symbolik in Berliner Galerie
