Gallery chat with artist Julia Goodman, held in conjunction with the exhibition Jewish Folktales Retold: Artist as Maggid, on view Sep 28, 2017–Jan 28, 2018 at The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco.
Goodman’s hanging paper installation is inspired by the final scene in the tale "The Bird of Happiness." This scene reveals the young king’s daily ritual of spending an hour inside of a shack, dressed in the rags he grew up in, looking at his reflection in a mirror. During this hour, the king looks back on where he came from in order to move his kingdom forward.
Recorded on Nov 10, 2017.
Julia Goodman creates low relief sculptural paper pieces from pulped, repurposed bed sheets, and T-shirts. These projects recontextualize the history of pre-paper technology, working within narrow material limits of plant-based materials to explore human interconnectedness, life cycles, and symmetry between the celestial and the terrestrial.
Jewish Folktales Retold: Artist as Maggid is organized by The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco. Lead sponsorship is provided by the Koret Foundation. Major support is provided by Gaia Fund, Wendy Kesser, and Dorothy R. Saxe. Sponsorship is provided in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Contemporary Jewish Museum thanks The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for its major support of The Museum’s exhibition program.
Julia Goodman at the Members' Opening Celebration for Jewish Folktales Retold: Artist as Maggid, on view Sep 28, 2017–Jan 28, 2018 at The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco. Photo by Gary Sexton Photography.