Washington Post: Art that Celebrates Peace
Jewish Threads in the Moroccan Muslim Carpet and Faces of Faith
Art section, writen by: Hank Burchard
At first glance the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum could be mistaken for a mosque. The museum had mounted a sumptuous display of fabrics and artifacts that celebrate 500 years of peaceful coexistence between Jews and Arabs in Morocco.
The exhibition’s ecumenical enthusiasm was partly produced by progress toward peace in the Middle East. The show is paired with a second exhibit that intertwines works of contemporary Christians, Jewish and Muslim artists.
Morocco has always been a model of tolerance, the museum motes, and the intermingling of the two cultures is reflected in the design of religious objects and in the decorative arts. Arrayed in the exhibit are Jewish and Muslim artifacts, such as mosque and synagogue lamps, that you can’t tell apart without a scorecard. Even sacred objects central to the faiths bear intimately related motifs, as in the covers and fabrics associated with Torahs and Qur’ans (Korans).
Not quite so smooth is the belending of recent works by American Muslim calligrapher Mohamed Zakariya, New York sculptor Judy Fox and painter Simonida Perica-Uth of Washington, originally from Belgrade.
Zakariya, who now lives in Virginia, works in a Turkish style of calligraphy he learned from a Moroccan master. In his pursuit of authenticity, the artist carves his own pens, grinds his own inks and makes his own paper.
Fox executes like-size ceramic figures from Jewish history, along with some non-Jewish prophets, priests, kings and mythological creatures. Her bold rendition of David as a prepubescent boy is a particular standout.
Perica-Uth paints New Testament figures in a style that seems at once iconic and almost anti-religious. Her subjects may be contorted or even turned upside-down; she sometimes ventures so far into mysticism that only her heavy use of gold and silver leaf maintains her identification with the medieval portraitists.
Unlikely as it seems, the three groups of artworks coexists fairly amiably in the same room, achieving a truce if not quite concord because all have their roots in the central mystery from which all religions flow.