Yiddishland

First-ever Yiddishland Pavilion debuts at the 59th Venice Biennale

Curated by Maria Veits and artist Yevgeniy Fiks, Yiddishland Pavilion will host
Venice-based and online activities featuring artists and scholars between April 23 and November 27, 2022.

By placing the Yiddishland Pavilion into the framework of the Venice Biennale and the system of the national pavilions, the project challenges the principle of national division within the biennale.

VENICE, ITALY (April 18, 2022)—Launching at the 59th Venice Biennale, the
Yiddishland Pavilion is the first independent transnational pavilion bringing together artists and scholars who activate Yiddish and the diasporic Jewish discourse in contemporary artistic practice. The Pavilion’s activities—performances, discussions, presentations of new artworks, physical and digital interventions—will unfold in Venice and online between April and November 2022.

The Yiddishland Pavilion takes place in a dialogue and collaboration with national pavilions of countries with histories of Yiddish-speaking Jewish migration. Being a fluid and nomadic project that is dispersed between Venice and the virtual world, the Yiddishland Pavilion represents Yiddishland ( נדַדישלאִיי or נדַאידישלא—(an imaginary country/land/space/territory and a stateless network connected through the Yiddish language and culture.

From its historical birthplace in the Jewish communities of Central and Eastern Europe of the 12th century, the Yiddish language and culture have developed in close contact and cross-pollination with languages and cultures of their non-Jewish neighbours, while also experiencing violence and discrimination. The Holocaust, antisemitic state policies in the USSR, and assimilation caused almost complete eradication of the Yiddish language in the Eastern Europe. Through waves of Jewish migration from Central and Eastern Europe in the late 19th and then 20th centuries, by now the enclaves of Yiddishland have expanded to the Western Europe, the Americas, and beyond. Hence the map of Yiddishland at the biennale includes such diverse parts of the world as Lithuania, Ukraine, Hungary, Poland, Mexico, China, Japan and more.

Yiddishland Pavilion does not concentrate solely on Jewish-related issues: the project is cross-cultural and transnational. It highlights the necessity to stand iin solidarity with those under attack and oppression and the strategies of nation- building while bringing into focus the themes of dehumanization and displacement. The Yiddishland Pavilion analyzes the erosion of global political constellations, practices collective remembrance, condemns war and occupation, and documents consequences of migration and politics of exclusion that target “Otherness.”

By placing the Yiddishland Pavilion into the framework of the Venice Biennale and the system of the national pavilions, the project challenges the principle of national division within the biennale. It forces the questions of national representation, selection, and inclusion in the art world into the political domain while also making connections between different art scenes through shared Jewish and Yiddish history. While revisiting traumatic and difficult pasts of the 20th century, the project acts as is platform for context and the critique of the continuing military aggression, imperialism, and colonialism practised by contemporary governments through wars, invasions of sovereign territories, and terror.

This year the Yiddishland Pavilion comprises a multidisciplinary online platform for presenting existing and new works, an audiowalk at the territory of the Venice Biennale that will connect different parts of Yiddishland through relevant national pavilions, and a series of public discussions, conversations, and performances, both online and offline.

The list of participating artists includes Ella Ponizovsky Bergelson & Anna Elena Torres, David Bernstein & Felix Kalmenson, Hagar Cygler, Shterna Goldbloom, Gin Müller, Simon Nagy, Anna Witt).

59th Venice biennale opening weekend at Yiddishland Pavilion
APRIL 23, 2022
14.00, Latvian Pavilion, Arsenale
Maps of Refugee Modernism(s)
Discussion about Jewish, Latvian, and Ukrainian refugee and diaspora artists.
Participants include Andra Silapētere, Inga Lāce, Nikita Kadan, Nikolay Karabinovych, Konstantin Akinsha, Maria Veits, Yevgeniy Fiks and others.
15.30, Arsenale
Neue Jüdische Kunst
Yarmulkes under the Turbans
Performance

APRIL 24, 2022
15.30, Giardini
Ella Ponizovsky Bergelson &
Anna Elena Torres
Pseudo-territory Inauguration of augmented reality sculpture

16.00, Giardini
Avia Moore
Take My Hand:
Yiddish Circle Dances in Venice
Participatory dancing