To honor the lives of Rabbi Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg, murdered with four other Jews in Mumbai's Chabad House, Israeli artist Menahem (Mel) Alexenberg is creating a unique collaborative art exhibit of Jewish prayer worldwide.
Called Rotate Light Before Darkness - based on a phrase from the Jewish prayerbook - Alexenberg is inviting synagogues throughout the world to contribute images from their daily morning prayer services. The objective, the artist says, is to create "a digital artwork in which morning services will be seen beginning in Jerusalem, circling around the globe through the 24 time zones, and returning to Jerusalem on the next morning."
Synagogues from Los Angeles, Denver, Berlin, Budapest and Tasmania have already sent photographs, Alexenberg reports.
Alexenberg, a pioneer in creating artwork exploring digital technologies and global systems, calls his latest project "a Wikiart project that, like Wikipedia, invites extensive participation in creating a web-enabled peer-produced artwork."
The collected images are slated to be displayed as part of the "Darkness to Light" Exhibition at Emunah College in Jerusalem during Chanukah. The Rotate Light Before Darkness artwork will then travel to museums worldwide, Alexenberg promises, and will also be accessible as a piece of "Internet artwork".
Alexenberg's past work has appeared in the collections of more than forty museums on four continents. He is currently the head of the School of the Arts at Emunah College and Professor Emeritus of Art and Jewish Thought at Ariel University Center of Samaria. Previously, Alexenberg taught as a professor of art and education at Columbia University and Bar-Ilan University, served as the head of the Art Department at Pratt Institute and was a research fellow at MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies. He has also authored two books on art in a digital environment, in English and Hebrew.
Those interested in taking part in this unique memorial art project should send a photograph of a weekday morning service to art@wikiartists.us as a jpg image, Alexenberg said.