Niv Fridman

About

Passover 1840 

The multidisciplinary installation Passover 1840 reflected on Jewish history and collective trauma. The installation consisted of three different projects linked together with research done by the artist on the history of Blood Libels.

Blood libels are antisemitic false accusations, which tie Jewish rituals with demonic acts, especially blood rituals with the Jewish holiday of Passover. The artist was specifically interested in a historical event called the Damascus Affair, where the elders of the Jewish community in Damascus faced false accusations and persecution following Passover in 1840. This event was one of the most pivotal events in modern Jewish history, and the atrocities that followed it shocked the Jewish diaspora and many others around the world. Given the prosperity, relative peace with their neighbours, and the ancient roots of the Jewish Damascus community, it raised the question of whether Jewish people could feel safe anywhere in the world.

A series of wood engravings shed light on different elements of the historical accounts of the Damascus Affair. The panels are made from 19th-century woods which were repurposed for this project. Later the wood went through a process of laser engraving. The designs were based on pencil drawings made by the artist, which could be seen in the booklet.

The installation also included a silver centrepiece with body casts, spears, engraved matzah crackers and a traditional Passover dinner plate. The piece was inspired by the Moses Montefiore testimonial Centrepiece. Montefiore was one of the most prominent and influential Jews at the time and he attempted to assist the Jewish community in Damascus. This elaborate silver work presented at the V&A collection in London was made to commemorate his mission to save the Jewish community in Damascus and made to represent him almost as a modern-day prophet or a messiah. 

The third element of the installation is the laser-engraved traditional Jewish Passover Matzah crackers. The engravings were made with laser, and are based on original designs by the artist. The engravings include special tribute to the prints of the artist Ephraim Moses Lilian and his interest in shaping new ways of representations of Jewish national identity at the turn of the 19th Century. 

The work includes different text elements, which are tied to the artist’s research on the topic. Some of the texts are traditional recipe for Matzah, some are biblical quotes taken from the Montefiore Centrepiece and some are personal reflections. Some of the texts are in English, some are in Hebrew transcript and some are in the artist’s Hebrew handwriting. In Fridman’s work, some of the texts are not accessible for people who don’t read Hebrew and/or English, and some are not accessible at all. They confront the audience with the question of how to interpret a text in a language they cannot read, and how much one’s projections influence their interpretation.

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Niv Fridman is an Israeli-born artist, Winner of Clore-Bezalel scholarship for master’s studies at RCA for 2023. Showed his works at the Hecht Museum in Haifa, The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Jewish Museum in Munich and the Tate Modern in London. He is the winner of multiple academic excellence awards, photography and music video competitions and the ARTiq scholarship. In his works, Fridman explores the lives of various figures from history. Fridman’s artistic practice combines meticulous historical research with the artistic freedom to weave imaginary stories and to plant/reveal queer motifs hidden beneath the surface. In his works, he sheds new light on archival documents and raises questions about the points of view that shaped history. His works challenge the accepted differentiations between truth and fiction, past and present, reality and imagination.