Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger: Eurydice Series

In the Fall of 2001, The Drawing Center housed the first solo exhibition of drawings by Israeli artist Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger in the United States. The show featured enigmatic drawings from Ettinger's ongoing Eurydice series, a collection she began in 1994. The series was derived from the Ancient Greek myth of a young woman who, shortly after marrying Orpheus, died from a venomous snake bite. In response to his prayers, Hades gave Orpheus the chance to return his wife to the living world, on the condition that he must trust she was following him and would not look at her until he had successfully led her above ground. Orpheus' weakness cost Eurydice her life a second time when his panic drove him to look over his shoulder.

In this myth, Ettinger found a reflection of her own family's experience and those of others during the Holocaust: survival after catastrophe, transgenerational memory, and the perpetual recreation of history. Through layering the dusky blur of family photographs and old newspaper images of Holocaust victims to explore motifs of exile, memory, and human relationships, Ettinger filtered tragic narratives through her unique philosophical concepts of the "matrixial gaze" and "borderspace." In this exhibit, curated by Catherine de Zegher (Executive Director of The Drawing Center at the time), Ettinger impressed upon the viewer the meeting of past and present.

Accompanying the exhibition was the publication of Drawing Papers 24, a 64-page edition of the Drawing Papers devoted to Ettinger's art and writings. The edition included 15 illustration of the artist's work, an essay by Adrian Rifkin, one text by the artist on the "Matrixial Gaze," and an introduction by Catherine de Zegher and Brian Massumi.