YIDDISHLAND PAVILION for the 19th BIENNALE OF ARCHITECTURE in VENICE
Yiddishland Pavilion is a multidisciplinary cultural initiative conceived and curated by Maria Veits (London) and Yevgeny Fiks (New York). Held alongside the Venice Biennale, the Yiddishland Pavilion acts as an “uninvited guest”, a guerrilla presence, aiming to challenge the Biennale’s traditional nationalistic structure. I was invited to create a work interpreting core Yiddishland themes.
Yiddish territory and culture have been variously defined as portable, fluid, diffused, nomadic. Accordingly, my proposed pavilion had no foundations or fixed location. The portable installation was designed to be carried/worn on the grounds of the Biennale. The drifting installation referred to the medieval legend of the Wandering Jew, a figure doomed to walk the Earth eternally without being able to settle anywhere. An invited performer wore the installation, playing the role of the pavilion itself and explaining its concept and meaning to the public.
