Miriam Arbus is a Toronto-based curator focused on digital technologies and experiences. She is curating an exhibition of paintings by artist Tunni Kraus as part of the Ashkenaz Festival 2024. We interviewed Miriam to learn more about the exhibition, what she’s excited to see at the Festival and what’s inspiring her in the kitchen.
Kultura Collective: Hi Miriam! Can you please tell u about your work as a curator?
Miriam Arbus: I’m really passionate about artists, and the unique visions they offer up to share with others. Curating for me is all about leaning into this vision and finding pathways to create deeper connections and understandings. I am forever in awe of the power of art; that it connects people, encourages self reflection and awareness, creates new perspectives, and encapsulates memories. I most often work with artists who use new technologies and digital tools and focus on bringing interactive and immersive projects to public audiences. I believe that these new ways are available to us to form important connections with each other, and with nature ecologies by using empathy and participatory media.
KC: Please tell us about the exhibition The Primoridum, opening at Caviar20 on August 28. (An Ashkenaz Festival off-site event, co-presented by Koffler Arts)
MA: The Primordium is a very special exhibition, running from August 28 – September 2nd at Caviar20 (647 Dupont St.) The artist Tunni Kraus resides in Melbourne, Australia, and is travelling to Toronto for the first time to debut this new body of work. (see exhibition hours below)
KC: Can you tell us more about the artist Tunni Kraus?
MA: Tunni Kraus is a Melbourne based multidisciplinary artist. His work challenges the way we communicate and make meaning through experimenting with calligraphy, traditional scribing practices, painting and new media. Since completing his Masters in Public Art at RMIT in 2010, Kraus has continued to study in the form of apprenticeships and training with master scribes of varied traditions in Australia, Asia, and The Middle East, most recently focusing on the sacred, scribal practices associated with the Hebrew letter. He has exhibited extensively in Australia and abroad, including MONA FOMA (Tasmania), McLelland Sculpture Gallery (Victoria), Oi! (Hong Kong), and Musrara Mix (Jerusalem). Learn more at www.tunni.com.au
KC: How did you get involved in the project? Why did you want to show this work in Toronto?
MA: Tunni and I are old friends and collaborators. We love dreaming up projects together and as a curator I’ve been following his work closely for years. Tunni had the opportunity to travel to Toronto for the Ashkenaz Festival 2024, and it seemed like a perfect time to debut this new body of work that so eloquently connects shared histories of Yiddish culture.
KC: How do these paintings draw on Yiddish texts and Jewish traditions?
MA: Kraus’s newest works, inspired by El Lissitzky’s Proun*, are based on Der Nisters’ short story entitled Der Kadmen, published in Yiddish in Warsaw in 1910. The paintings are a chapter by chapter breakdown of this text and a meditation on the dialectics of being and nothingness. The paintings refer to Der Kadmen as one of the boldest experiments in writing of Yiddish/ Jewish myth in modernity.
Utilizing El Lissitzky’s technique of geometric abstraction, the series emancipates the Zoharic concepts buried in the story’s density. The paintings examine the anxieties associated with the creative act, and question, how something can come from nothing. They attempt to map our self-consciousness and creative drive for self-expression through examining our relationship with cosmic silence and nothingness.
*In 1920 artist El Lissitzky coined the term “Proun”—an acronym for the Russian words meaning “project for the affirmation of the new”—to refer to a series of abstract works that combined the Suprematist lexicon of geometric, monochromatic forms with tools of architectural rendering.
KC: What can visitors expect when visiting the exhibition?
MA: Tunni Kraus and Miriam Arbus will both be present for the majority of gallery hours. Visit anytime and get to meet the artist and hear first hand about his intentions behind the work, and techniques applied.
KC: We understand these works will be travelling – what’s the next stop?
MA: After Toronto, Tunni Kraus will be travelling to New York, NY, to present works in an exhibition.
KC: What are you looking forward to seeing at the Ashkenaz Festival 2024?
MA: All of the great music that is scheduled, and the togetherness of community.
KC: What else are you working on right now?
MA: I’m working on a collaboration with artists Diana Lynn VanderMeulena and Stefana Fratila, that will emerge as an immersive experience presented at the Design Exchange for Nuit Blanche 2024 (October 5th!)
KC: Who/what is inspiring you in Toronto right now?
MA: Alysse Rich
KC: What other (Jewish) creatives should we know about?
MA: Tova Arbus, Adina Kraus
KC: What’s inspiring you Jewish-ly lately?
MA: Recipes and cooking (as always)
KC: If you could have Shabbat dinner with anyone (Jewish), who would it be and why?
MA: In light of the exhibition – it would have to be Der Nister.
KC: Lightning round question!
- Applesauce vs sour cream? Both!
- Poppy vs sesame seed bagels? Sesame
- Latke vs sufganiyot? Latkes
- Raisin vs plain challah? Plain
- Hummus vs baba ghanoush? Hummus
- Rugelach vs bourka? Rugelach
- Poppy seed vs prune Hamantaschen? Prune
- Zaatar vs Harissa? Zaatar
- Spinning the Dreidel vs Finding the Afikomen? Spinning
- Pickled herring vs gefilte fish? Gefilte
- Shawarma vs falafel? Falafel
- Fiddler on the Roof vs Joseph? Fiddler!
- Tevya vs Fruma Sarah? Tzitel vs Hodel? lol! Fruma Sarah?
- Larry David vs Jerry Seinfeld? Jerry
- Tiffany Haddish vs Fran Drescher? Fran
- “Puppy for Hanukkah” vs “The Hanukkah Song”? Puppy
- New York vs Montreal bagels? Both
- Pomegranate vs apple? Pomegranate
The Primordium
Public Opening Event: August 29, 2024: 6-8pm: Caviar20, 647 Dupont St.
Exhibition Open: August 28 – 31, 2024 | 12-6pm
September 1 – 2, 2024 | 12-3pm
Tunni Kraus is a Melbourne based multidisciplinary artist. His work challenges the way we communicate and make meaning through experimenting with calligraphy, traditional scribing practices, painting and new media. Since completing his Masters in Public Art at RMIT in 2010, Kraus has continued study in the form of apprenticeships and training with master scribes of varied traditions in Australia, Asia and The Middle East, most recently focusing on the sacred, scribal practices associated with the Hebrew letter. He has exhibited extensively in Australia and abroad, including MONA FOMA (Tasmania), McClelland Sculpture Gallery (Victoria), Oi! (Hong Kong) and Musrara Mix ( Jerusalem).
Miriam Arbus has an ongoing, developing practice interested in issues that intersect around new medias and digital technologies, post internet and post digital existences, and new feminisms. She investigates the shifting geographies of new realities and landscapes and the potentials this offers for openness and equalising representation. Her practice has taken form most frequently in curatorial pursuits: organising conceptually-driven exhibitions and participatory experiences that are responsive and relational.
Miriam is passionate about bringing interactive creative XR opportunities to the public, and has lead immersive art installations around the globe while organizing the project space Sky Fine Foods. Miriam is also the Global Communications Coordinator for Psychic VR Lab’s STYLY Global XR, and a project manager with Radiance VR. Miriam received a BA from Concordia University, and an MA from the University of Toronto.
Recent projects include too fragile to hold, Vector Festival 2024, Extended Realities at MUTEK Mexico 2023, Seed Systems: Speculative Ecologies in XR Art Today (2022, Berlin, DE), Sentient Windows: Carson Teal (2022, Toronto, CA), Recollecting Futures exhibition with Synthesis Gallery (2021, Berlin, DE), SUPERHIGHWAY 2021 (VR), Lossless Bodies with The Wrong Biennale (Web/VR), and the Sleepover Club Initiative (Melbourne, AU).
The Ashkenaz Festival is one of the largest and most prestigious showcases of Jewish music and culture anywhere in the world. Since 1995, the festival has taken place biennially at Harbourfront Centre, Toronto’s premier venue for the presentation of world and folk culture and for the meeting of diverse communities through the arts. Originally founded as a showcase for Klezmer and Yiddish music and culture, the Ashkenaz Festival has evolved over the years into an eclectic showcase of global Jewish art and culture, encompassing not merely the traditions of eastern Europe, but also Sephardic, Mizrachi and Israeli culture, and all manner of cross-cultural fusion. The Festival is offered 90% free to the public and attracts a multicultural audience of over 60,000 people. Nowhere else in the world does so large and diverse an audience come together to experience Jewish cultural arts. Though strongly focused on music, Ashkenaz is a multidisciplinary festival, including dance, theatre, film, literature and talk, visual arts, and kids/family programs. Ashkenaz usually features over 80 performances and 200+ individual artists, hailing from across Canada and around the world. Over the years, Ashkenaz has presented artists from over 25 countries and 6 continents.
