In this exhibition, Rotem Tamir explores ancient craft traditions rooted in familial practices linked to her Southwest Asian and North African heritage. An immigrant to the United States teaching in the University of Minnesota’s Art Department, Tamir reflects on domestic tasks traditionally associated with women, such as making wool mattresses (Jerayah in Judeo-Tripolitanian, as made by her grandmother in Libya), preparing the Iraqi dish kubbeh, and fabric-making. These demanding tasks often require women to sacrifice personal desires and ambitions for the sake of their family and community. Tamir addresses the cost many women bear worldwide by connecting wool to a medieval torture apparatus. Circular handles stretch the thread, metaphorically representing the body being pulled to the point of breaking. Where does her action begin, and where does embedded knowledge emerge? How is the beauty she creates born, and what amount of suffering and female sacrifice is involved?

The creation of the mattress, both in the past and today, involves entire communities, relationships, knowledge exchange, and coordination by various contributors. These layers of human involvement are crucial to the final product. When looking at the mattresses, we remember the human dimensions embedded within them.

The exhibition weaves a rich tapestry of cultures associated with Eastern Judaism, featuring objects symbolizing customs, places, Hebrew words with transcendent power, and creative practices Tamir learned in her travels, from North India to the Negev desert. The word lev (heart), which Tamir has cast in bronze to reflect like a mirror, symbolizes, in the Kabbalah, the entire Bible, but also love, the most powerful energy in the universe. The heart is connected to the round mattress placed in the center of the exhibition space, symbolizing the infinite spiral of existence, with sound emanating from it, created in collaboration with the sound artist Nir Jacob Younessi, featuring traditional Jewish songs sung by Tamir’s father and maternal grandmother. For the nomadic Jewish tribes, songs, and rituals, kept as fixed constants in tradition today, serve as anchors transmitted from generation to generation.

The domestic space, vital in these traditions, is represented by two mattresses opposite each other, with a bowl made from Susita car parts, reminiscent of Tamir’s nostalgic, multigenerational concept of home. Visitors are invited to relax on the mattresses as if in a living room, a welcoming gesture from the artist. The tapestry of memories continues with a conceptual chandelier installation created by Tamir using a technique she invented: large pine rosin bubbles blown like glass. These golden resin spheres evoke the timeless elegance of crystal chandeliers, embodying symbols of enduring luxury and cultural heritage found in grand synagogues around the world. They also represent the many candles that Aunt Lisa, one of the sisters of Rotem’s Grandma Wassi, lit every day for the deceased, accompanied by special prayers for family members. Tamir spent a lot of time with Aunt Lisa during her childhood. Aunt Lisa’s candles were made by pouring oil into a cup with water and using a cotton ball that she twisted herself as a wick.

The exhibition draws its strength from the constant movement between the physical and metaphysical connections created among the artworks, forming an imaginary halo that flows and exists from the tree’s roots from which the resin was taken, through the circle of the mattress, and ending with the word lev, the highest branches of the Tree of Life. All to the rhythm of the sounds emanating from the mattress. Thus, in an infinite circle, Tamir has created a multilayered, timeless cultural and social space.

Curator: Sharon Toval

Listen to the sound work by Nir J. Younessi >>

To the exhibition catalog >>

Support is provided by

the Office of the Vice President for Research, University of Minnesota;

Rimon: The Minnesota Jewish Arts Council, an initiative of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation; and the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant.

In-kind support is provided by Rebecca Diwan, Orchard Acres Textiles, and Wendy Wustenberg, Windswept Hill Farm. 

Community Partners include Sufiyan Ismail Khatri and his studio, Tracy Krumm, Jeffery Sandeen, the Department of Art, University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, Chaim Teitelbaum and his family, and Katrina Ulrich, Marigold Arts. Key contributors: Vikram Joshi at Rangotri, master carver Khursheed and his assistant Rakesh, Robert McClain, Charles Schaffer, Corrie Steckelberg and Nir Jacob Younessi.