In person at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA
In Victoria Hannah at In Plain Sight: Sounds Create Worlds, Victoria Hanna will engage with Jewish language, liturgy, and symbols through voice, sound, and visuals. This performance draws on themes from the new Magnes exhibition, In Plain Sight: Jewish Arts and Lives in the Muslim World.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Victoria Hanna is a multi-disciplinary artist, voice and language explorer, composer, and creator active in both Israeli and international spheres. Victoria works in various media, including singing, text, sound, video, and performance, incorporating them together. Her work explores the liminality of the human voice: language, sound, and speech, connecting the auditory and visual aspects of language. Her video works reflect her continuous engagement with ancient Hebrew texts. The techniques she developed over the years provide extraordinary tools for investigating traditions and musical expressions, endowing sound and words with magical power.
Hanna’s sound and video installations have been displayed in institutions like the Eretz Israel Museum, Jewish Museum Vienna, Jewish Museum Frankfurt, and Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna. Her performance art has been exhibited at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, BAM, and New York Kitchen. In 2015, Forbes magazine selected her as one of the 50 most influential women in Israel. She has been awarded the Rozenblum award for outstanding artists (2022).
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Co-curated by Magnes Curator Dr. Francesco Spagnolo and scholar of Islamic art Dr. Qamar Adamjee, In Plain Sight: Jewish Arts and Lives in the Muslim World shares a selection of artworks and objects from the Magnes’s permanent collection that challenge common views about historical dualities and creative engagement among Muslim and Jewish artists and patrons. The exhibition highlights rootedness in diaspora, shared graphic forms and visual landscapes, attitudes towards sacred texts and human bodies, and networks of trade and knowledge exchange, all centering around the fundamental role of light in Jewish and Muslim prayer space.
In Plain Sight is generously supported by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, David Berg Foundation, Kenneth Kofman and Andrea King, and an anonymous donor.
Monday, September 23 @ 5:30-7:00pm
Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA
RSVP Here.
Co-sponsors: The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life; the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies; Berkeley Center for Jewish Studies