Ritual Slaughterer
2022-23
solo exhibition at BLINDSIDE 2022;
solo exhibition at FELTspace March 2023.
It is particularly important to highlight that this exhibition, surrounding conversation and research have always been both; crucially aware of Israel’s ongoing colonial project of genocide in Palestine, and attempting to demonstrate that Judaism is not inextricably linked to israel's Zionist genocidal agenda. Despite all best attempts at co-opting, there is resistance and a drive for the end of colonial occupation and all of its devastating, fascist and violent implications.
Since this exhibition closed the most recent instalment of israel’s genocide has unfolded; Palestinian people and their land, animals and waterways have been devastated. Palestine has my unwavering support in the face of this chapter of genocide. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
This project is a multi-layered examination of the intersections of Judaism and queerness. It engages Jewish culture and ritual and autobiographical/autohistorical study to explore the formation of my own experience as a queer person/settler with Jewish ancestry.
This project opens up international dialogues of progressive political ideologies and speaks to the immense potential for secular and transgressive rituals to suit and serve marginalised people’s relationships to Judaism and spirituality more broadly. It is a deeply personal body of work reflecting upon my own Jewish ancestry, the migration of my family to Australia and how, as a queer person, I can contextualise my heritage, politics and relationship to Jewish culture within the framework of contemporary Australian society, global communities, and other independent researchers.
“Why, I asked myself sometime last year, does this question of Jewish identity float so impalpably, so ungraspably around me, a cloud I can't quite see the outlines of, which feels to me to be without definition? And yet I've been on the track of this longer than I think”
– Adrienne Rich. (1)
‘Ritual slaughterer’ is the direct translation of schochet, a Hebrew word relating to the person who slaughters and prepares meat in accordance to Kosher standards. This among many other standards provides the framework for the process of ritualisation. My patrilineal family were fundamental in establishing a Jewish community in Adelaide in the late 1850s.
After having migrated from England to so-called Australia, my great, great grandfather, Solomon Saunders, was invited to take up multiple positions within the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation; including that of the schochet and cantor as well as his involvement in the foundation of South Australia’s first synagogue.
This research project is focussed on the continuities and discontinuities of ritual across two different subcultures, their malleability and their potential to be adapted to suit marginalised relationships to spirituality. I will investigate the transformation of spiritual spaces, queer club culture, Jewish migration to Australia and transgressive readings of Judaism.
I believe there has been great work done before me to reimagine a contemporary Jewish identity which is as multiplicitous and diverse as humans are. I believe this exhibition would build upon and further add to research done by existing queer Jewish academics and artists and positively contribute to discussions around the intersection of Australian identity and ritual.
This project builds upon four years of self-funded and led research which has taken me to archives at the State Library of South Australia, to site visits of significance such as the first synagogue in Adelaide, now a queer nightclub, Adelaide’s West Terrace Cemetery, and the former synagogue in Broken Hill.
I believe there has been great work done before me to reimagine a contemporary Jewish identity which is as multiplicitous and diverse and nuanced as humans are. It is my hope that this exhibition builds upon, and further adds, to much research done by existing queer Jewish academics and artists and positively contributes to discussions around the intersection of Australian identity and ritual.
[1] Split at the Root: An Essay on Jewish Identity (1982, reprinted in Blood, Bread and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985).
A special thank you to Lauren Abeneri for scoring the work.
The thinking, feeling, filming and research for this project has been done on the unceded lands of; the Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation ~ Narrm/ melbourne. As well as on; Wilyakali country ~ broken hill/ silverton and Kaurna country ~ Tarntanya/ adelaide and surrounding plains/ waterways.
Click image above to watch an excerpt of ‘I know this much is true’.
