All Rise

Abstract

Abstract The performance artist Helène Aylon has, for decades, done groundbreaking work in giving artistic expression to the difficult, contradictory position of the observant Jewish feminist. Aylon is perhaps best known for the first of her series, The G-d Project. The Liberation of G-d (1996) was an installation of bibles with pieces of translucent parchment covering the individual pages. By hand, she highlighted the passages on each page where women were being hidden, rejected, or excluded. The sound of the parchment and the labor involved were part of the project, as well as the thick books, which grew to twice their original size in the course of the work, in spite of the fact that the women’s efforts consisted of highlighting their own exclusion. In this extract from her memoir, Whatever is Contained Must be Released: My Orthodox Jewish Girlhood—My Life as a Feminist Artist,she discusses the last of the series, All Rise. The memoir will be published by The Feminist Press is planned for April, 2012.-ed.