Venice art installation grapples with its Jewish history at 61st International Art Exhibition

Artist and architect Anna Kamyshan's installation "Nabatele," an official collateral event of the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, presents a striking image: a shtetl-style synagogue suspended above the Venetian lagoon. The work, on view from July 16 to September 16 at Arsenale Nord, invites viewers to contemplate themes of identity, belonging, and memory.

"Nabatele" is described as playful, spiritual, and unsettling. It imagines a Jewish house of worship without a solid foundation, its windows perpetually lit to symbolize the Ner Tamid, the eternal light in synagogues. This illumination serves as a metaphor for a persistent, albeit fragile, source of light amidst times of war, displacement, and uncertainty.

Kamyshan, who is of Ukrainian Jewish heritage and Russian origins, describes the project as a personal exploration of identity. The installation's title combines the Hebrew word "nabat," meaning a warning or alarm, with the Yiddish diminutive suffix "-ele," creating a word that suggests both danger and tenderness. This duality reflects the complex layers of identity and the challenges of belonging within shifting borders.

The floating synagogue also resonates with Venice's own profound Jewish history. The city was home to the world's first Jewish ghetto, established in 1516, where synagogues were often hidden. Kamyshan's work subverts this history of concealment by elevating the synagogue, making it visible and illuminated. Furthermore, the installation evokes the memory of Eastern European wooden synagogues destroyed in the Holocaust, transforming them into an ethereal apparition rather than a conventional memorial.

Curated by Maria Veits and Yevgeniy Fiks and presented in collaboration with the Montreal Jewish Museum, "Nabatele" draws parallels to artistic explorations of the surreal, such as René Magritte's "The Castle of the Pyrenees."

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Nabatele is a very personal project, created while I was in search of my personal identity