Fear of the Void

Fear of the Void is an artist's book in 70 copies. On the first page, is the Odyssean story about Penelope, Odysseus' wife, and her spinning work, which is created and undone every day to stop time.

Aggie, my grandmother, apparently entered Auschwitz in April 1944, and in August was transferred to the Boizenburg-Elba camp, to hard labor in a frozen factory for airplane parts. One winter day, she was summoned by a Nazi soldier looking for a female prisoner with artistic abilities to decorate a jug.

Like Odysseus's Penelope who tried to delay time until his return, Aggie dismantled her day's work every evening to not finish the jug. During the days of the Shiva for my grandmother, my brother and I found piles of photographs of her works, including photographs of urns, apparently the only ones she made.

This is the starting point for the book, which contains two narratives: Aggie's on the right side, with photos from her studies at the academy, strange portraits of her, photos of works and of the jugs; on the left side, photographs of my unfired clay sculpture, which is being broken down by water dripping from a fountain. This plane also exists as a flip book scrolling backward—it does not fall apart but is created.

The tiny format of the book echoes pocketbooks, notebooks, talkbooks, and manuals, which can be carried by and accompany the reader. At the same time, the refined fabric and the foil ring on its cover make it a valuable object, which corresponds with the terracotta that was the main material of my grandmother's work.

The limited edition of the book also includes ten books buried inside a statue of a rock. Each rock is carefully selected and cut. Inside it lies the book so that only its spine is visible. The book in the rock is kept as a vigil or as a prayer—referring to the Wailing Wall which is the ultimate stone wall—in which the wishes of our hearts are placed on a note, but also as a nod to the adventure films in which the one special rock, or enchanted tree, is hidden among hundreds of others that look exactly like it, and one must know how to recognize it, to open the gate to a world beyond.

-- Dana Yoeli