Artist-in-Residence
Rochelle Rubinstein
Rochelle Rubinstein is a Toronto-based printmaker, painter, fabric and book artist. She is represented by loop Gallery and Fran Hill Gallery in Toronto, where her solo exhibitions are held regularly. Her work has been exhibited in diverse locations and can be found in many public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; New York Public Library; the Irish Museum of Modern Art; and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. As a community arts facilitator, she runs workshops and projects involving at-risk groups based upon methods that are central to her own practice: drawing, printmaking, bookmaking and sewing. She has completed several artist residencies in New York State, Toronto and Ireland. Rubinstein curates exhibitions at the Mon Ton Window Gallery in Toronto.
Artist Statement
Cover Image by Rochelle Rubinstein
This still life detail is from my collection of block-printed, painted, drawn, sewn and collaged accordion-folded books, in which I blend cultural legends and texts with my repertoire of imagery and memories. The books are connected by shared themes of ambiguity, loss, history, repression, and unreliable memory—themes that are steeped in the traditions and obsessions of my family and of my life as an artist. A key recurring image is a taupe-colored silk knee sock, which belonged to my father’s young son who was murdered in Auschwitz. I have been rendering, overlapping, decontextualizing and abstracting this precious object in an ongoing attempt to process unacceptable information and to somehow keep alive my father’s memory of his firstborn child. The cover image includes one of Uri’s socks, a spool of thread (always an evocation of my mother who was a beautiful dressmaker), and the printed word למה , Hebrew for “why,” floating sideways. This one word represents the many questions that compete for attention during the creative process.
The Artist-in-Residence is featured at a pop-up gallery exclusively during HEW. More >>
All three HEW 2013 experts in residence will be addressing "Holocaust Legacies: The Canadian Connection" during a panel discussion on Tuesday, 5 November at 11:00 am, Ryerson University.
The 2013 Artist-in-Residence is generously sponsored by Collins Barrow LLP and by Julia & Henry Koschitzky in memory of Judith Rubinstein. All programs during HEW featuring the Artist-in-Residence are generously co-sponsored by Collins Barrow LLP and by Julia & Henry Koschitzky.