Bracha L. Ettinger
For the artist, painter and theorist, painting presents an occasion to transform the remnants of a catastrophic past into a transhistorical field of compassion. Traces of sighs and tears, the semaphores of pain, are re-inscribed onto canvas as forms of fragile communication. Figures tremble into appearance from beneath translucent layers, bringing to bear the frail lightness of the human condition; the stain of history hanging onto the semblance of form. The artist gravitates towards transgenerational memories culled from both a personal and a collective consciousness to transpire themes of maternality, non-abandonment, and care (‘carriance’). She invites the viewer to perceive these fields of apparition as a kind of depth-space and as a passageway towards a productive ‘transubjectivity’. The diffracted feminine subject at its core existing as a mother-figure and an expansive space: a mental and physical holding zone. Understanding painting as equally an aesthetic and ethical gesture, Bracha L. Ettinger’s oeuvre builds toward a visual language of lament and wonder. It is a monumental architecture of female sign language.
Solo exhibitions devoted to the artist have been presented by numerous international museums and biennials including: Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy; Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Keraly, India; Silesian Museum, Katowice, Poland; 14th Istanbul Biennial, Turkey; Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Angers, France; Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain; Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki; BOZAR, Brussels, Belgium; The Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia; Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel; Drawing Center, New York, USA. Her work has been presented in numerous group museum exhibitions including: Art Museion, Bolzano, Italy; GAM, Turin, Italy; Bonnier Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden; MAS/KMSKA Museums, Antwerp, Belgium; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. USA; Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel.
Bracha L. Ettinger is the author of numerous articles and books on art, psychoanalysis, aesthetics and ethics including: The Matrixial Borderspace [essays 1994-1999], 2006; Matrixial Subjectivity, Aesthetics, Ethics, Vol 1:1990-2000, ed. G. Pollock, 2020; Regard et Espace-de-bord matrixial, 1999.
Selected Works
Exhibitions
Press
Curriculum Vitæ
Lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel and Paris, France
SOLO AND DUO EXHIBITIONS
2022
Bracha L. Ettinger, Radicants, Paris, France
Bracha L. Ettinger, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, USA
2021
Bracha’s Notebooks, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy
On Hannah Arendt: What is Freedom?, Richard Saltoun Gallery, London, United Kingdom
2018
Eurydice – Pieta, UB Anderson Gallery, Buffalo, NY, USA
2017
Eurydice – Pieta, Silesian Museum Katowice, Poland
2016
And My Heart Wound-Space, Braverman Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
Bracha L. Ettinger, Callicoon Fine Arts, New York
2015
Medusa – Eurydice, Galería Polivalente, Guanajuato, Mexico
2014
Medusa – Eurydice, Leopoldo Flores Museum, Toluca, Mexico
Demeter – Eurydice Medusa – Butterfly, Illuminations Gallery, Maynooth University, Ireland
2013
Memory Post 2, Freud Dream Musem, St. Petersburg, Russia
Memory Post 1, Museum of the City of St. Petersburg, Russia
Bracha L. Ettinger, Sommer Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
2012
Lichtenberg Flower & Medusa, NIROX projects gallery, University of Johannesburg, South Africa
2011
Le Cabinet de Bracha, Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Angers, France
Bracha’s Room, Poznanskie Towarzystwo Przykaciół Nauk, Poznan, Poland
Memento Fluidus, Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova Museum, Turku, Finland
2010
Alma Matrix, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain
Beyond Uncanny Anxiety, ICI Kulturlabor, Berlin, Germany
2009
Resonance/Overlay/Interweave, Freud Museum, London, United Kingdom
Fragilization and Resistance, Kaiku-gallery, Kuvataideakatemia, Helsinki, Finland
2006
Notebooks, KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland
2003
The Matrixial Gaze: Eurydice 1990–2003, Gerwood Gallery, Oxford University, United Kingdom
Herbier Volume, Les Abattoirs Museum, Toulouse, France
2002
Portraits (1991) with Emmanuel Lévinas, Maison de France, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
2001
Eurydice Series, The Drawing Center, New York, USA
2000
Borderline, BOZAR – Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium
Les Eurydice, Carles Cartwright/Carousel Gallery, Paris, France
1998
Eurydice, Cinematheque, Bergen, Norway
1997
Eurydice, Claude Samuel Gallery, Paris, France
1996
Doctor and Patient – Memory and Amnesia: Bracha L. Etinger and Sergei «Africa» Bugayev, Museum of Art, Pori, Finland
1995
Halala – Autistwork, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
Halala – Autistwork, Cité du Livre, Aix-en-Provence, France
1994
Oeuvres Autistes, Kanaal Art Foundation, Kortrijk, Belgium
1993
Matrix, The Russian Museum of Ethnography, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Matrix – Borderlines. Signs and Emblems, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, United Kingdom
Matrixal Borderline, Galerie d’Art Contemporain du Centre Saint Vincent, Herblay, France
1992
Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism, Le Nouveau Musée, Villeurbanne, France
1991
Métramorphose, Centre Régional Art Présent, Saint-Raphaël, France
1990
Bracha L. Ettinger, Deutsche-Palästina Institut, Goethe Institute, Paris, France
Matrix – Cas limite, Ec’art, Betton, France
1988
Bracha L. Ettinger, Musée des Beaux-Arts et de la Dentelle, Calais, France
Bracha L. Ettinger, Claude Samuel Gallery, Paris, France
1987
Moyens de transport – Album de famille, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
Moltkerei Werkstatt, Köln, Germany
Bracha L. Ettinger, Sara Levy Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
1984
Bracha L. Ettinger, Diagonale Éspace Critique, Paris, France
Pink Government in Exile: Bracha L. Ettinger and Hella Santarossa, Düsseldorf, Germany
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2023
Artisti in Guerra, Castello di Rivoli, Rivoli, Italy
2021
Le temps retrouvé, Villa Tamaris, France
Espressioni.The Proposition, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy
Psychic Wounds: On Art & Trauma, The Rachofsky Collection, The Warehouse, Dallas, USA
2020
Spaces in Crisis, Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel
Borderlinking, High Art, Paris, France
2019
Doing Deculturalization, Museion Bozen/Bolzano Museum, Italy
Don’t Touch Me: Acts of Faith, Robert Grünenberg Gallery, Berlin, Germany
Hearth of Darkness, Castello di Rivoli at OGR – Officine Grandi Riparazioni, Turin, Italy
Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India
2018
Nightfall, Mendes Wood, Brussels, Belgium
The Human Condition [Part III: The Haunted House], Ekaterina Institute with National
Center for Contemporary Art, Museum of Modern Art and Jewish Museum Tolerance Center, Moscow, Russia
Ester Krumachová: Yeti – Wear the Amulet – Tangle Up the Archive, tranzitdisplay, Prague, Czech Republic
2017
The Image of War, Bonnier Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden
Lyric on a Battlefield, Gladstone Gallery, NY, USA
Encounters/Ontmoetingen. About art and emotion, MAS/KMSKA, Antwerpen, Belgium
Colori, GAM, Turin, Italy
2015
SALTWATER: A Theory of Thought Forms, 14th Biennial of Istanbul, Turkey
2014
In the Heart of the Country: The collection of the Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej, Warsaw, Poland
2013
Not-book – Plain project, Beit Ha’ir Tel Aviv-Yaffo Culture Museum, Israel
Plaster, PHR, Tel Aviv, Israel
One Painting, Rietfeld Academy, Amsterdam, Holland
2012
The Hidden Mother, l’Atelier Rouart, Paris, France
Planty, Minshar, Tel Aviv, Israel
Transmission Body Archive, Kassel, Germany
Mahane Tziur (Painting Camp) n.5. Tahanat Ramle Contemporary Art, Ramle, Israel
2011
ELLES, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
Gallery Opening Show, Feinberg Projects gallery, Tel-Aviv, Israel
Boat, Riverbank, Turku, Finland
Les choses perdus, Vegas Gallery, London, United Kingdom
2009
Liga, Amiad Center, Jaffa, Israel
Painting-law, Haheder Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
2008
Eventually, we’ll die: Young Art in Israel of the Nineties, Museum of Contemporary Art, Herzliya, Israel.
Trans-scapes of Langs-schappen, Lokaal 01, Antwerp, Belgium
Returning Fire, Newe Zedek House, Tel Aviv, Israel
2006
Gorge(l), Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Belgium
Migratory Aesthetics, University of Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds, United Kingdom
2003
Aletheia. The Real of Concealment, Konstmuseum, Göteborgs, Sweden
2002
Fondation Camille collection, Hotel de Ville, Paris, France
1999
Interarchive, Kunstraum der Universität, Lüneburg, Germany
La Ville, le Jardin, la Mémoire, Villa Medici, Rome, Italy
Voices from Here and There, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
1998
Women Artists in Israeli Art, 1948–1998, Haifa Museum of Art, Israel
Denkbilder—Images pensées, Carousel/Charles Cartwright Gallery, Paris, France
Maeght Gallery, Barcelona, Spain
1997
Inside the Visible, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
Kabinet, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Holland
Oh Mama, Museum for Israeli Art, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Fondation Camille collection, Maison de la Culture Côtes de Neiges, Montréal, Canada
Body, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Face à l’Histoire, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
Inside the Visible, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, USA
Inside the Visible, National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington, USA
Inside the Visible, Whitechapel, London, United Kingdom
1994
Quelles Hystéries, École des Beaux-Arts, Rennes, France
Art-focus, Daphna Naor’s Place for Contemporary Art, Jerusalem, Israel
Reminiscences and Obsession, Artists’ House, Jerusalem, Israel
1993
Public and Private: Secrets Must Circulate, Stills, Newcastle, United Kingdom
Public and Private, Institut Français d’Écossé, Edinburgh, Scotland
Signatures de Femmes, L’Église Saint Jacques, Lisieux, France
Touching Words, Line, Form, Mishkenot Sha’ananim, Jerusalem, Israel
1992
Paysage en exergue, FRAC-Centre collection, Espace Art Brenne, Le Blanc, France
1991
Routes of Wandering, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
Israeli Art Now. An Extensive Presentation, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
Parcours, Galerie Claude Samuel, Paris, France
Selection 1991, Langer Fain Gallery, Paris, France
MSF, Musée d’Art Contemporain, Dunkerque, France
1990
Feminine Presence, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
1989
1st International Biennial of Young Painting, Museum of Gerone, Spain
1988
Charles Cartwright Gallery, Paris, France
Lauriers Wizo, Guigné Gallery, Paris, France
1987
Collection de la Fondation Camille, Frau Museum, Bonn, Germany
XXXIe Salon de Montrouge. Art contemporain, Centre culturel, Montrouge, France
1986
Matière et Mémoire, Isy Brachot Gallery, Paris, France
1985
Émergence, CAPC – musée d’Art contemporain, Bordeaux, France
Le Matiérisme Aujourd’hui, Galerie Antiope, Paris, France
XXXe Salon de Montrouge, Art contemporain. Centre culturel, Montrouge, France
10 jeunes pour demain, Maison de la Culture, Amiens, France
1984
XXIXe Salon de Montrouge. Art contemporain, Centre culturel, Montrouge, France
16e Festival International de la Peinture, Château- Musée de Cagnes-sur-Mer, France
Il était une fois la femme, Prix de Peinture Jeanne Gatineau, Galerie Mansart, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France
Neue Kunst in der Philharmonie, Berliner Philharmonische Orchester Hall, Berlin, Germany
1983
Art Contemporain, Centre Culturel Jules Vallès, La Ricamarie, Saint-Étienne, France
Alternativa III, Cultural Centre, Almada, Portugal
1982
XXIIe Biennale de Paris: Lieux d’artistes, Diagonale Éspace Critique, Paris, France