21ST.PROJECTS is pleased to announce a viewing of Yevgeniy Fiks’s “A Gift to Birobidzhan” from September 11 to October 19, 2014.
For more information or to make an appointment to see the collection contact Yevgeniy Fiks at fiks.yevgeniy@gmail.com. Viewing is by prior appointment only.
There will also be an artists talk on Sunday, October 5, 6:00pm, which is being presented by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. The talk will be held at the gallery in Chelsea so attendees will be able to see the exhibition afterwards. The event is free, but RSVP by October 1, to guarantee seating at: 21stprojects.rsvp@gmail.com
A Gift to Birobidzhan of 2009 was an attempt to repeat and complete — seventy years later — the gesture of “a gift to Birobidzhan” in 1936. As of 2014, it remains still a rejected gift and a “state-less collection,” packed in boxes in Fiks’ apartment in the Lower East Side. A Gift to Birobidzhan evokes the utopian promise of Birobidzhan — a Socialist alternative to a Jewish state — as a point of departure for discussions on broad 20th century’s impossible territorial politics, identity, national self-determination, and a common “seeking of happiness.” At present, we find that many of the same questions from the early 20th century have resurfaced again.
More information on the event and YIVO:
