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The speculum that shines
2022
Photo-assemblage
Inkjet Print, Glue, Tape
A series of materializations of collected satellite imagery of the former Pale of Settlement, a formally-defined section of the former Russian Empire in which Jews were once permitted residency while being barred from full citizenship. Following successive wars, atrocities, and expulsions, the landscape, while still an imaginative site of origin, stands as a void of cultural memory and nationalism often invoked in discourses of Jewish diaspora in the present. Surveying the landscape through layers of technological mediation and history charges a devotional gesture with unruly and ambivalent meaning. “The speculum that shines” refers to a kabbalistic concept of mystical visuality suggesting a mirror or optical apparatus that presents both the world as it is and overflowing with divine radiance. The phrase evokes the mutual entanglement of vision and imagination.