BRACHA L. Ettinger’s (b. 1947) paintings and drawings are obtained through multifold layers of pigment, ash, dots and fine lines, in a durational process that can span through several years. For the artist, writer, psychoanalyst and teacher, painting presents an occasion to transform the remnants of a beleaguered historical past into a transhistorical field of compassion. Traces of sighs and tears, semaphores of deep emotion, are re-inscribed onto canvas as forms of delicate and fragile communication. The artist connects to transgenerational memories culled from both a personal and a collective consciousness to transpire themes of maternality, non-abandonment, and care. She invites the viewer to perceive these fields of empathy 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 as 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: Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (ongoing); Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy (2021-23); Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, USA; 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.

K21 museum in Dusseldorf will be presenting a major solo exhibition of Bracha L. Ettinger’s latest paintings and notebooks in spring of 2025.

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.