Food insecurity
Visual Response
Hillel Smith
What Sustains Us
Jewish Street Art Festival Passover 2021 – Contemporary Plagues
Repair the World/JCC Harlem (New York City)
On view now.
Current circumstances have exacerbated the existing crisis of food insecurity in this country. Meanwhile, an unexpected consequence of the pandemic has been reconnecting us to how and what we eat as we spend more time at home. In Hillel Smith’s paired murals, What Sustains Us, he was inspired by the two quotes bracketing the beginning and end of Birkat Hamazon (the traditional prayer said after eating): “Hazan et hakol” (thanking God for sustaining everything and everyone) and “Na’ar Hayiti v’gam zakanti v’lo raiti tzadik ne’ezav” (I have been old and I have been young yet I have never watched a righteous person forsaken…) He has designed a language of faces and body parts built out of utensils and food items—spoons, forks, knives, fruits, and veggies—that offer fun and whimsical encouragement to think about all that connects our bodies to what we eat.
Hillel Smith
Hillel Smith is an artist and designer focused on re-imagining the potential of Judaica by utilizing contemporary media to create new manifestations of traditional forms. He has painted dynamic Jewish murals in Southern California, Atlanta, Virginia, Minnesota, Jerusalem, and at the Fendi headquarters in Rome. He revitalizes ancient rituals with online projects, including the Best Omer Ever: GIF the Omer counter and Parsha Posters, encouraging creative reconsideration of religious practice. Seeing Hebrew as the visual glue that binds Jews together across time and space, he also teaches Jewish typographic history, using print as a lens for Jewish life and culture. Making fun and engaging content is similarly the crux of his work as a designer for clients including HIAS, PJ Library, and Patton Oswalt.
Jewish Street Art Festival Passover 2021 - Contemporary Plagues is produced by Asylum Arts and Hillel Smith, in collaboration with LABA, and made possible with the generous support of CANVAS. Murals have been created in New York City, Charlotte and Toronto. In Toronto, Bareket Kezwer’s mural at the Miles Nadal JCC engage with the plague of binary thinking, and is in partnership with the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto. Mike Wirth’s mural in Charlotte at the Queens University of Charlotte in partnership with the Stan Greenspon Center for Peace and Social Justice at Queens University of Charlotte, makes visible the plague of housing insecurity. Hillel Smith’s paired murals in New York City, at JCC Harlem and Repair the World NYC, engage with food insecurity. Maya Ciarrocchi’s mural at the 14th St Y in New York and the video installtions at ZAZ10TS in explores the plague of grief and loss.
