Body Illuminated

Rivka’s show Body, Illuminated; Finding Strength in the Human Spirit follows the artist through her four year journey from the chaos of Hasidic Brooklyn to the uneasy bliss of Southern California, as she moves through a worldwide pandemic, the fog of Long Covid, and the devastating present.

Throughout it all, Rivka returns continuously to the theme of the power and glory of the body, listening to how it can heal us, soaking in spiritual lessons wherever she can find them, determined to keep dancing.

*This show is also being sponsored by the Arts Council of Long Beach, from which Rivka received two grants to work on these pieces.

ARTIST STATEMENT

At age 16, I sat in a figure drawing class and thought to myself: This is what I want to do with the rest of my life.

I could sit all day in a state of spiritual appreciation, painting the raw, silent beauty of a body in motion.

Yet post-college, I spent a decade away from figurative work, moving to a religious, Hasidic community in Brooklyn that didn’t see the holiness in that kind of art. I got busy raising three children, caught within a hurricane of needs.

At the height of the pandemic in 2020, we moved abruptly to the foreign lands of Long Beach, California. Isolated and bewildered, crawling out from a decade of motherhood and self-effacement, I started to quietly ask again what the body could teach me.

These paintings began to emerge, showing themselves in stages of growth. During this time, I also spoke and painted people of different faiths to gain inspiration for how they walked through the world.

Then in June of 2022, I got sick with Long Covid. I spent twelve very long months with my body and mind stuck in an amygdala trauma loop of fear. How do we convince our bodies that we are free when our brains believe otherwise?

I sometimes think about the disturbing slogan Arbeit Macht Frei (work sets you free) that hung over the Auschwitz Nazi extermination camp. I think about how to shift its meaning, from a trauma to a liberating mindset. What is the work that sets me free?

Myself a granddaughter of Auschwitz, my instinct used to be to compulsively do something to feel calmer, in an attempt to engineer a sense of safety. But when I was hit by my Long Covid traumatic brain injury, barely able to talk at times, I learned to find safety in just being. In that year of recovery, I learned how much the body can heal and liberate itself. How much more it can teach me about joy if I let it, if I become its partner. This became my fuel.

With the absolute devastation of October 7 and its aftermath, my body and brain is once again tested. How much despair and fear and misery can it hold? I wonder. How should/could I move forward?

At such a challenging time, it is my wish that this work gives the viewer hope, that it emboldens our bodies to believe that better days are coming and that we can help build them together. It is my prayer that we can experience the joy of our bodies together, transcending all of the pain.

We were formed inside another creature and then released into this world, perfectly containing all of the essential components that will continue to multiply and pound and shed and grow throughout our lifetime.

Despite our weariness, we stand up. We run, we jump. Sitting in front of the body as it does these things puts me in a state of jaw-dropping wonder.