I would like to express my deepest and most heartfelt gratitude to the ROI Community founded by Lynn Schusterman for giving me the opportunity to publish my first art catalog.

My art is rooted in the inspiration I receive through symbols and religious and spiritual texts such as the Tanach, the Talmudic Midrashim, the Kabbalistic Book of Zohar and other sources. My art has become an inner passion for a greater spiritual reality that exists in my mind and soul. For the last five years I have been exhibiting my artworks in Sweden, Austria, Israel, and Slovakia. In 2013 I am planning to organize exhibitions of my artworks in Bratislava, Prague and Berlin. The art catalogue includes artworks of mine, explanations and ideas. I am delighted to use the Micro grant for publishing my first art catalogue which is a great promotion material during exhibitions and will involve people in learning about Jewish culture, texts and ideas through art.

As a Paideia fellow I came across the concept of spreading Jewish knowledge and meaningful identity through Jewish literacy. Yet I understood that valuable Jewish texts from Midrashim or mystical sources are not easily accessible for many people in the Hebrew or Aramaic original. Therefore I wish to use the universal language of visualization in order to illuminate spiritual concepts and inspire the observers and try to make them understand that our Jewish tradition can be seen as a colourful mosaic. Text speaks to our ratio, but paintings speak to our emotions. And through using one you can awaken the excitement for the other, to be used in Shiurim all across the J globe.

Alisa Poplavskaya

Link to the catalog:

http://cl.ly/3F3b0w303o0I

Pomegranate of Commandments
Acrylic on Canvas, 90x80 cm, Stockholm, 2008

 

In the painting “Pomegranate of Commandments”  the pomegranate seeds appear to the observer as Hebrew letters, hinting at the notion of the holiness of language, similar to the idea that James Joyce had for his “Ulysses”, language is the martial art of our human spiritual eyes.

This is one aspect. Based on Jewish mystical scripture a pomegranate is the symbol of the 613 commandments in the Torah. There are two different kinds of commandments: The DOs and the DON’Ts that scripture can reflect back from the reality it stems from, be it real or a legend. The same division is also to be found in the “Ten Commandments”, where five commandments present the relationship between God and humans and the other five represent the relationships among people, which can be understood both in a religious or a Kantian way. These relationships are presented by the different branches and roots, which are either growing up or pointing down. The branches which are growing up symbolize our connection to our HIGHEST, and the branches which are growing down symbolize the relationships between people.

The path inside the pomegranate begins with dark colours and at the end it becomes golden: this symbolizes the Exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt to the land of milk and honey. In the colours of “milk and honey” the observer finds similarities to a map of the biblical lands. Focus on the second glimpse...

The Seven Days of Creation in חי or חי in the Seven Days of Creation? 

Acrylic on Canvas, 80x80 cm, Bratislava, 2012

 






This painting is based on the concept of the world’s creation from the Book of Genesis and the Kabbalistic concept of  חי (life, living, alive).

The combination of these two concepts in the painting represents life, as a state of being alive, in any possible intellectual and emotional understanding. In the painting there are day and night, water above and water below, an earth with plants and fruit–bearing trees, a division between light and darkness, the planets and stars, living creatures and human beings. The romantic story and the concept of love in our understanding enter on the sixth day. From this moment on the Hebrew Bible is not following the story of the stars in detail anymore, but follows conscious life on earth and the relations between the human beings of different genders: the beginning of the romantic story and a relationship.

The question “Seven days of creation in חי or חי in seven days of creation?“ points at mysticism and realism, not judging between theoretical life (in scripture) and the kaleidoscope of the colours in our soul. Time started before humanity, but humanity is the only entity to recognize it. Based on this you find the seven days of creation inside and outside the big חי. The mystical background are the five worlds and the five levels of soul, where the חי is the “fifth element”.

Alisa Poplavskaya