Geniza, 2020
Mixed media, found objects
120 x 205 x 44 inches
Public and Private Collections
Commissioned by the Weisman Art Museum, 2020

The Geniza is an assemblage created for the exhibition Abracadabra and Other Forms of Protection, which features many artworks and fragments of larger pieces from Harriet Bart’s long career. She has described the making of smaller-scale objects as restorative breaths she takes between her work on larger projects. This aspect of her creative practice is closely tied to her habit of finding and keeping objects that others would likely discard—found letters, stereoscopic slides, and plumb bobs, for example.

This container for Bart’s smaller-scale work across time and media is inspired by geniza, an ancient Jewish tradition of storing documents in a safe place to protect or conceal their words. The origins, development, and precise nature of this practice have remained mysterious, but we know that it initially involved the physical act of concealing, storing away, and in many cases physically burying heretical religious texts. Geniza as concealment of the heretical was gradually eclipsed by geniza as a means of guarding fragile and obsolete texts, both religious and nonreligious.

Geniza evades full understanding, but it represents the Jewish cultural investment in the power of words. In its connection to this ancient practice, this installation also emphasizes the ability of objects to serve as vessels to contain memory and forgotten histories.

Exhibition: