Activating Exodus: the art of Melissa Shiff.

Immediately, the viewer confronts a screen embedded in a crushed velvet pillow surrounded by a wall of matzah, showing a montage of video clips imaging the ten ancient plagues that Yahweh cast on the land of Egypt: blood, frogs, vermin, beasts, cattle disease, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and the slaying of firstborn sons. An accompanying voice-over rhythmically recites the plagues in Hebrew and in English, not simply the ancient plagues but also possible analogies to our present-day plagues of homophobia, unbridled profit motive, hatred toward the Other, AIDS, rape of nature, war, one-dimensional rhetoric, religious fundamentalism, and exploitation of the Other.

Upon entering the dimly lit scene of "The Medium is the Matzo," Canadian artist Melissa Shiff's 2005 Passover installation at the Bronfman Center at New York University, one first moves through a narrow corridor of walls tiled with matzo and a floor lined with small detailed pillows reading "crush oppression" overlaid upon the image of matzo. The viewer walks over these floors, literally crushing the matzo beneath their feet along the way. In total, the gallery is covered with approximately 4,000 pieces of matzo donated by Manischewitz. Haunted and hallowed, there is a sense that one has entered a consecrated space and time, a moment loaded with meaning. This passageway opens up into a room with a video installation that projects onto a large screen the scene of the Israelites departing Egypt through the pathway in the Red Sea, orchestrated by Moses in Cecil B. DeMille's iconic film The Ten Commandments (1956). Here, the viewer sees themselves inserted into the scene, a participant in the Exodus. The passage from the ritual text in the Haggadah that states "You yourself feel as if you are leaving Egypt" is evoked; the emphasis is on the here and now.

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This visual invocation of Judeo-kitsch, Biblical weightiness, and the media theory of Marshall McLuhan is only the beginning of Shiff's project to critically reconsider the medium and the message of ritual, popular culture, social activism, and contemporary art. Media, according to Shiff, a video, installation, and performance artist, is the place where social action begins. Shiff's invocation of the movement through Mitzrayim, the Hebrew word for the land of Egypt and "narrow spaces," as it relates to the parting of the Red Sea (in itself, a movement through narrow spaces) is at once symbolic and literal in terms of physical and philosophical oppression. The video loop proposes that this reenactment is and must be continuous. These narrow spaces can be read not simply as the physical or geographic relation of place and situation, but moreover as a way of thinking that must be overcome. Moving through the corridor of the installation, there is a poignant suggestion that "tunnel vision" be deposed.

Working on both levels, this installation recounts the story of Exodus and recalls the Haggadah's mandate to put one's self in the position of the oppressed, to escape narrow mindedness, and to crush oppression. This remembering is not done in the form of passive contemplation, but rather in active participation. The visitor becomes an Israelite escaping Egypt and the pharaohs--moving between these overwhelming walls of water from slavery to liberation, as Moses parts the Red Sea. This story becomes metaphorical rather than fundamentalist; it serves as a call to action, a call to abolish the plagues through social action. Within our contemporary context, today's pharoahs can be read as the individuals and institutions that oppress people and the environment in the interest of globalization and personal gain.

"The space of liberation" consists of two installations, "Elijah Lounge" and "Miriam Bar," both designed in a style that is hip, sleek, and functional. "Miriam Bar" symbolizes sustenance and spiritual renewal, recalling Miriam who divined water during the passage of the Exodus. Here water is offered to the viewer, enacting a contemporary ritual that has been introduced by feminists to the Passover Seder. The floor of "Elijah Lounge" is further covered with the "crush oppression" matzo pillows, providing an inviting place to recline (the symbolic gesture of freedom at the Seder) and view the video installed within the fireplace facade that shows an extending sequence of doors being opened. This spliced series of entrances represents doors from across New York City, from the Lower East Side to the Upper West Side, scanning the wide array of neighborhoods in between and documenting the diversity of economic discrepancies across the city alongside a suggestive proposal for openness and sharing--a further call to end oppression. It is also the same video that is installed in Shiff's Elijah Chair (2002) and housed by the permanent collection of the Jewish Museum in New York City. By referring to the Biblical prophet Elijah and the Seder's ritual tradition of opening the door to him in the welcoming gesture of Passover, an invitation is made not only to a community of intimates but also to strangers. By emphasizing this gesture of hospitality, opening the door to the Other, Shiff highlights her advocacy that we ourselves should be placed in the position of the harbinger Elijah. Shiff states:

This video documents the staggering divide of wealth in this city of

extremes in an effort to show that Elijah signifies the hospitality

and openness to the Other that must occur ... If Elijah represents

hospitality, I wanted to push his role even further and employ this

prophetic figure in the service of social action. (1)

This story opens the door--actually and allegorically--to Shiff's practice, a narrative that deliberately evades closure in the name of possibility and reinvention.

Attached to these spaces of reflection and replenishment is the adjacent "Matzo Ball Activist Store" in which one may catch a glimpse of the artist herself at work, stitching her "crush oppression" pillows. This Marxist exposure of the working process is yet another move to actively defeat exploitation by simultaneously demystifying expectations of art and ritual in the name of activism. Along the walls of the "Matzo Ball Activist Store" is row upon row of at least 120 jars of Manischewitz Matzo Ball Soup, which are visually reminiscent of Andy Warhol's silk-screened soup cans. However, Shiff's engagement with consumerism and pop culture is for distinctly different ends; it is part and parcel of an action to aid and address poverty. Significantly, these were donated to a soup kitchen run by the Hebrew Union College upon the exhibit's closing. As a means of literally removing oppression, visitors are also invited to purchase "crush oppression" pillows accompanied by information on the tradition of Passover activism. Described by Shiff as "Seder Enhancement Kits," a portion of her sales goes to help the hungry--just one more way of literally and figuratively thinking outside of the box.

This was not the first display of Shiff's commitment to "transforming the Seder from a story that is told to a story that is acted upon." (2) Shiff's "Times Square Seder, Featuring the Matzah Ball Soup Kitchen" of 2002 was an interactive performance and installation art piece that mobilized art and ritual in the service of social activism. It was a radical Jewish response to hunger that emphasized the powerful political potential of unleavened bread as it recalled the Jewish people's slavery in Egypt, and remembered their oppression in order to avoid imposing it on others.

Staged in New York City, in the windows of the Chashama Arts Organization, this event accentuated the commitment to social justice demanded by Judaism of caring for strangers among us. Based on the ideal of tikkun olam, a recurring motif and resource in Shiff's work, this work sought "to heal, repair, and transform the world," taking the Passover Haggadah's mandate to "feed the hungry" to a place where New York City's hungry and homeless had most visibly been banished. (3) Noting the dramatic and disturbing contrast between the sensational advertising and consumerism of this famed capitalist center against the mass crowds of disenfranchised and impoverished peoples, passersby were invited to partake in the event, as not simply viewers but as participants. This "Happening for Homelessness" was situated deliberately in this site of high pedestrian traffic in order to be exposed. As such, this strategic gesture opened up the Seder to the possibilities inherent in those transient and fugitive moments of urban life; it allowed for each person passing by to recognize the nomadic and often disconnected nature of contemporary life while considering themselves within the subject position of the wandering Jew.