The Romanian Cultural Institute in Tel Aviv is presenting the exhibition “Romanian Heritage – A Journey in Time” by Beverley-Jane Stewart, between 06.12.2021 – 07.02.2022, at RCI Tel Aviv Gallery (8 Shaul Hamelech Blvd, 6th floor).
Dedicated to celebrating the National Day of Romania, the exhibition includes paintings, etchings and collages of Romanian landscapes and historical events. Foreign landscapes, ancient structures alongside modern high-rise towers, synagogue interiors, sloped mountain villages leading down to a blue lagoon with big sailboats and scenes that seem to be from illuminated manuscripts. The Romanian landscape is spread out before us, with the cities and towns that Beverley-Jane Stewart visited and documented for three years. In her various draftsman like paintings, time seems to have stood still, and yet she succeeds to create a connection between past and present Romanian events, weaving between local secular and Jewish religious history, family sagas and Yiddish cultural history.
Curators: Vera Pilpoul, Arie Berkowitz.
The exhibition is open to the public between 06.12.2021 – 07.02.2022, at RCI Tel Aviv Gallery (8 Shaul Hamelech Blvd,, 6th floor, Beit Amot Mishpat), Monday to Thursdays, 09:30 - 17:00, Fridays, 09:30 – 14:00, as well as during the events organized by the institute during this time.
Stewart’s most common mediums used in her research-based works are painting, drawing, engraving in wood and Perspex and etching. She attributes great importance to the visual option of binding her family stories and the history of Jewish life in big cities and small towns in old Romania to the contemporary country as a bridge between past and present, as well as integrating the local Christian culture with the Jewish culture that developed in Romania over centuries. The collage-like compositions depicting the urban fabric, stretch from past to the present: the Yiddish theatre of Bucharest, synagogues, secular, urban and rural buildings – all are enmeshed in the work, testifying to the social and community changes in the Romanian community, the history and traumas of Romanian Jewry who suffered from attacks and discrimination as far back as the 19th century. Along with the large number of Romanian Jews deported to concentration camps and murdered in World War II.
Through the artist’s eyes, past and present merge in the works exhibited at the ICR-Romanian Cultural Institute, Tel Aviv, Israel, representing Jewish community life and contributions to Romania’s culture and local economy from the 18th century to the present. “I am attempting to compose a painterly tapestry of Jewish life emitting sounds of life from the past, in a modern context,”.
Beverley-Jane Stewart’s work may at times be comparable to naïve art which attaches no importance to perspective, presenting environmental space vertically and not as deep space. A philosophical style that was originally used to convey theological messages through the depiction of biblical scenes from both the Old and New Testaments, later developing to portray secular scenes. On the façades and in the interiors, she frequently portrays, Stewart represents even the tiniest details, with special emphasis on architecture, forms, and ornamentation. A look at Stewart’s oeuvre shows that she seems to hover timelessly over the locations she paints, creating a kind of a-temporal collage connecting the inside and outside with human figures and landscapes taken from her family’s narrative and historical research materials. Stewart flies over her subject, depicting its residents, customs, and scenes without adhering to the rules of perspective. She provides viewers with a broad, personal, subjective view through a timeless prism whilst presenting a Jewish sound and nostalgic samplings with a contemporary spirit forming a cultural mosaic evoking deep longing.
