Remember the Women Institute has been cooperating with brilliant young Israeli artist Gil Yefman since 2014.
The wall text at the Haifa Museum of Art, in Hebrew, English, and Arabic, explains that the Gil Yefman/Kuchinate basket installation is an Israeli preview of Remember the Women Institute’s New York City exhibition. Photo, right: A view of some of the five baskets in the installation.
As part of BAY MIR BISTU SHEYN (“To me you are beautiful”), Gil Yefman’s solo exhibition that ran from May 10, 2014 until June 14, 2014 at the Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York City, there was a special benefit event for Remember the Women Institute.
In connection with Gil Yefman’s art exhibition, Remember the Women Institute presented a special evening program with the artist at the Ronald Feldman Gallery. One of Yefman’s subjects is grappling with sexual violence during the Holocaust. He joined gallery owner Ronald Feldman, Dr. Sonja M. Hedgepeth, and Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel, as well as the audience, for an evening of conversation and other activities. The event included: The exhibition, Gil Yefman: BAY MIR BISTU SHEYN; the opportunity to watch and interact with Yefman’s performance art about forced prostitution; and the conversation. Dr. Sonja Hedgepeth, and Dr. Rochelle Saidel are the editors of Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust.
Yefman’s unique exhibition is related to his exhibition H: An Exhibition by Gil Yefman in The Container, Tokyo, held from August-November 2013, for which Drs. Hedgepeth and Saidel contributed a catalog essay. It is also connected to his winter 2014 participation in a group show entitled Traces V: Beyond Paper, the Fifth Biennale for Drawing in Israel at the Jerusalem Print Workshop.
Left: At Bay mir bistu sheyn, a benefit for Remember the Women Institute, Sonja Hedgepeth, Gil Yefman, Rochelle Saidel, Ronald Feldman (l-r) discussed Yefman’s art about sexual violence during the Holocaust, in connection with his exhibit at the Ronald Feldman Gallery. Right: Dr. Eva Fogelman, Dr. Sonja Hedgepeth, Dr. Rochelle Saidel, and Gladys McMilleon (l-r) observe artist Gil Yefman’s performance art inside his crocheted sculpture of a forced sex slave during the Holocaust.
Preview of VIOLATED! at Haifa Museum of Art
The Haifa Museum of Art in Israel opened a group art exhibition entitled Dangerous Art on November 11, 2017, curated by Svetlana Reingold. Among the exhibitions, which revolve around artists’ responses to limitations placed on civil freedom in Israel and worldwide, is an exhibit of huge crocheted baskets created by Israeli artist Gil Yefman and a group of African refugee women from the Kuchinate workshop in Tel Aviv. This installation was commissioned by Remember the Women Institute as part of our exhibition, VIOLATED! Women in Holocaust and Genocide, presented April 12-May 12, 2018, at the Ronald Feldman Gallery, Mercer Street, SoHo, New York City. The installation at the Haifa Museum of Art was an Israeli preview of this component of our group exhibition.
Dr. Batya Brutin, curator, and Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel, academic coordinator, for our VIOLATED! group exhibition visited the Haifa Museum on November 24 to see the basket installation on display. The Eritrean and Sudanese women who have sought refuge in Israel suffered great hardships as they made their dangerous treks. Some were sexually violated as they made their way across borders and through deserts. A soundtrack that emanates from the baskets tells their stories.
Gil Yefman’s Kibbutz Buchenwald at the Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv, Israel
December 25, 2018 – May 4, 2019
On March 5, 2019, there was a “Soft Body/Hard Truth: Guided Tour and Discussion” at the museum. Artists Gil Yefman and Dov Or-Ner led a tour of the exhibition Kibbutz Buchenwald (in Hebrew). Immediately afterward, in the gallery, there was a conversation between Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel, founding director of the Remember the Women Institute, and Dr. Diddy Mymin Kahn, founding director of the Kuchinate Collective. Moderator was the exhibition curator, Adi Dahan. Artist Gil Yefman has worked with both organizations.