Sharoni Sibony: My Body’s Keeper

This series of works on paper weaves together the visual vocabularies of communal Jewish prayer — Torah scrolls, cases, pointers, and more — and the artist’s own objects of pain management for fibromyalgia, putting the crip in scripture. Drawing on the comforting public symbols of her Jewish upbringing and the private symbols of her self-care rituals, she asks how we can reconceive synagogues and communal spaces as places where people can turn for comfort and care. These works are an invitation to consider how we think about and measure time, how we embody our spiritual lives, how illness affects our relationship to community and belonging, and how our spaces can be more spiritually centering places of recursive healing, strength, and support

Sharoni Sibony is an enthusiastic educator, artist, and community organizer. While pursuing a PhD in English Literature at Indiana University, she taught undergraduate writing courses. She worked in Toronto’s Jewish Community Centre system, running adult educational and cultural programming. She took ceramics courses at Sheridan College and taught pottery classes at Woodlawn Pottery Studio. Currently, she is learning Talmud with Yeshivat Maharat; teaching an adult B’nai Mitzvah course for the Winchevsky Centre; mentoring Chinese students on their applications to American universities; taking poetry classes; and making art. She has lived with fibromyalgia for over 25 years.

The Gallery at the J is a digital home for creativity that educates, entertains and expresses shared experiences of humanity. For questions, comments and purchase information please contact Ian Mcnulty, Coordinator of Adult Art and Culture at ianm@mnjcc.org.