Artist Zoe Buckman is getting the last word.
After her former London gallery “indefinitely” scrapped her show over fears its focus on Jewish identity might spark “potential hostility,” the British-born creative debuted the work in a powerful solo exhibition at the Mindy Solomon Gallery in Miami.
Buckman’s show — named after the Leonard Cohen song “Who By Fire,” an adaptation of a Yom Kippur prayer — features intimate portraits of her family and friends and focuses on the “importance of Jewish community,” she says.
“These works look at the complicated relationship to the idea of the Home for myself and my people — at belonging, safety, resilience and joy.”
The series features a familiar face, with “Girls” star Jemima Kirke done in acrylic and embroidery on vintage textile.
“Jemima is absolutely part of my Jewish community and there are two portraits I’ve made of her in the series” Buckman, who was formerly married to “Friends” star David Schwimmer, tells us.
Buckman explains that her now former gallery told her that the show “was indefinitely canceled because apparently they wanted to spare me ‘potential hostility’ and ‘wait for a time that London is less antisemitic’ to show my work.”
“The cultural boycotts and efforts to censor Jewish artists in all creative fields serves to remove our narratives and presence from the canon of art history, thus removing and denying our lived experiences,” Buckman tells Page Six. “Just like Holocaust denialism, there is a real effort right now to diminish and gaslight the realities of our persecution and also the strength of our joy, creativity, and resilience.”
She continued, “If anything I want this series to say that we are here…that you can take us off the wall and try to hide us because we’re not going anywhere. I’ve been told over the years that my work makes people feel seen and I think that’s always been an intention.”
But Buckman remains positive.
“I have more faith in audiences and curators than my former gallery,” she tells us.
Her work has appeared in over seven museums this year including the National Portrait Gallery in London, SFMoMA, the Neues Museum in Germany and Crystal Bridges in Arkansas.
“I’ve been working largely with non-Jewish curators and institutions and they seem able to see myself and my work in our totality,” she tells us, saying the antisemitism she has experienced, “brought into sharper focus the value of true community and fortified for me the importance of my continuing to make this work and keep going.”
Next year, her video work “Show Me Your Bruises, Then,” which explores intimate violence in relationships, will be on view at the Perez Museum.
The work is a performance of a long form poem read by Buckman and actresses Sienna Miller and Cush Jumbo.
Her Miami, Fla., show runs through Jan. 10.
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