The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco has been riding strong exhibitions over the past 18 months (Stanley Kubrick, Roz Chast), and their latest is newly commissioned works by 16 contemporary artists, “in response to a selection of tales from Jewish folklore.” Our attention turned naturally to sculptor Elisabeth Higgins O’Connor, who participated in the Juxtapoz x Superflat show at Vancouver Art Gallery this past year.
For Jewish Folktales Retold: Artist as Maggid, Higgins told us, “I’m addressing the tales of the Golem, a creature created to protect the community from harm. I was interested in describing the creator (of the Golem), and the creation (the Golem) in terms of polarities or spectrums dealing with the feral versus the domestic, dominance and authority versus passivity, panic and regret, and how contradictions or both sets of qualities can be manifested in an entity or psychological state. I’m building two new large-scale works for the exhibition.”
