Art makes life more beautiful. What would life be without our favorite films, novels, paintings, and records? Dreary, to say the least. That being said, we too often forget of the beauty, relevance, and wonder of the rituals and objects that we engage with on a daily basis. That is why it is so important to understand the work of an artist like Rachel Libeskind, who forces her audience to re-think the significance of and find the beauty in even the most mundane of experiences.
Libeskind is a New York-based multi-media artist merging visual, performance, and installation art who has shown work in Paris, London, Milan, Rome, Austria, Lithuania, and New York. As the daughter of famed architect Daniel Libeskind, who is responsible for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, she was exposed to and allowed to think about art from a very young age.
Libeskind will be performing her new piece, The Traveling Bag, from June 10 to 20 at the Hotel Chelsea (the performance leads into a show co-penned by Patti Smith and Sam Shepard entitled Cowboy Mouth: Young Artists at the Chelsea, for tickets click here). Libeskind was raised by parents who “traveled more than they ever stayed in one place,” according to her. Thus, her fascination with the rituals of the mundane manifests here in the form of the suitcase, and its packing and unpacking. I linked up with Libeskind over E-mail to discuss the piece and the ideas behind it and her artistic output.
Forbes: Seeing as your work holds aspects of visual and performance art, do you know which form grabbed your attention first? Or was all creative expression always a part of your world view?
Rachel Libeskind: I started performing music and was a professional voice-over actress as a child in Berlin. I have always made images or sculptures, collected objects, and loved art. During the self-consciousness of adolescence, I chose visual art in lieu of performance. It was not until I was commissioned to perform at the Festival in Spoleto in summer 2014 that I rediscovered the beauty of live making and live performance. I feel lucky that the persistent ghosts of performance keep pestering me.
Forbes: You might be sick of being asked about your father, Daniel, and I apologize if that's the case. But being that he is the architect that he is, did that allow you to be exposed to art and creativity at a younger age than most?
RL: I owe the freedom I feel in my creative expression to my father. He also instilled in me a deep passion to keep pushing the boundaries of art in a cultural context. Growing up, I was exposed to all of the art and media you could ever want a child to see. Vacations were spent in baroque churches, not the beach. Tests were administered to see if I had truly understood what [Piet] Mondrian's work was about, much to my 12-year-old chagrin. I think the most profound artistic trait I inherited from my father was to challenge and defy mediocrity, at whatever cost.
Forbes: You've said that your process is all about experimentation; do you ever have a plan of where your work is going to take you, or do you just work and see where it goes?
RL: I start with a framework and that delineates the form and context of the work. Experimentation is important, but personal structure is everything. It's a balancing act: being free to experiment without losing sight of what you want to create. Working with theater, film, and music forces me to rethink the roles of the visual artist.
Forbes: In your upcoming show The Traveling Bag, what initially drew you to the idea of the suitcase and its subtext?
RL: I grew up abroad and the suitcase has been a totem in my life. Travel, exile, immigration, emigration; these are the themes that have distilled themselves in my life. I see the legacy of the 20th century lives as encapsulated in a suitcase (one of my heroes, Tadeusz Kantor, once profoundly said "Suitcases are the bearers of memory"). The notion of having 'stuff,’ of taking it with you, unpacking it; these are fundamental elements of modern life. Through performing, I am investigating the ritual of the bag. One of these days, when I have done enough research, I will write a book with all of my findings.
Forbes: From the looks of The Traveling Bag and its press release, it seems to carry an influence from Russian writers like Kafka and Nabakov, have you always been drawn to these writers and if so what do their works mean to you?
RL: Absolutely. Kafka and Nabokov are two of my favorite writers. I am a pure-breed Eastern European Jew (In fact, I just got a Polish passport). My blood runs thick with the legacy of post-realism in art and the magical images of Kafka. There is an Eastern sensibility to the suitcase, certainly for Jews, as they were continually being re-located and forced to move. Writers from the East like Dostoyevsky, Gombrowicz, Kantor, Kundera, and Chekov are interested in the dark magic within the mundane. Their work has always spoken to me.
Forbes: Do you consciously attach meaning to inanimate objects in your work or is this just a natural working of your brain?
RL: I think all objects have their own souls, even those that are mass-produced. I think all objects are auratic (Note: term derives from a philosophy developed by German philosopher Walter Benjamin, “auratic perception”) and each object holds its own meaning and place in the cultural context. I am not consciously attaching meaning to them. I aim for that meaning to be revealed to me in some way, much like a primitive woman looking for an omen. I work with a lot of found materials, and I often allow that process of finding things to steer the direction of the work. I like to imagine I am just a medium for the ghosts of these objects to poke through the opaque layer of the past, into our present.
Forbes: You've said a skiing accident lead you to ponder your place in the world, do you think that without that injury and its caused isolation you would be the artist that you've become?
RL: I shattered my right humerus on a mountain in Switzerland in January 2012. While laying on the mountain in dramatic pain, I watched the clouds and fog lift to reveal the snow-covered peaks and perfect blue backdrop of the Alps. I think this experience was a true encounter with “the Sublime.” The combination of deep pain and profound natural beauty changed something inside me. As a right-hander, I was unable to work for the following 9 months. I was forced to read and think and live a much slower life. It awoke a lot in me, things I think I am still seeing for the first time today.
Forbes: Your work seems to vary between confrontation and expression of love, do you think that an expression of love should or can still be confrontational?
RL: Definitely. Love, like hate, is a confrontation. It is a violent act of vulnerability. The mediation of love and confrontation has revealed itself to be one and the same. I am an impossibly ambivalent person, constantly being swayed between the expression of love, and the confronting of it.
Forbes: Would you argue your work is more cultural or biographical, or does it have to be either of those things and can it be both?
RL: I would hope both. Rather, I think they are the same. The culture I inhabit and the culture I create are deeply biographical. I am as interested in the biographies of my past lives and the cultures that exclude me just as much as I investigate that which is familiar.
Forbes: Like you, I also have great interest in my Jewish heritage and the Jewish experience, but I am personally atheist, are you religious in any traditional sense or are you more just fascinated with the history and culture of Judaism?
RL: I am the first woman on either side of my family to have been Bar Mitzvah'd. My grandparents, who were holocaust survivors, were rigorously anti-religion. It was not until they had passed on that I was 'allowed' to have a religious education. I am interested in Judaism from all perspectives: culturally, spiritually, and especially ritually. Candidly speaking, I feel excluded from the religion because I am a woman, a fact that angers me but is also funny and ironic. I come from a rich lineage of famous talmudic thinkers and Rabbis. I’d like to locate myself in this legacy, despite its efforts to negate my presence. I am proud to be a Jew today, whether or not I prescribe myself to a set of religious codes.
Forbes: What is your own personal definition of 'beauty?"
RL: Beauty is ugliness! Beauty is the unexpected magic. Beauty is fleeting and terrifyingly permanent. Beauty is emotional. Beauty is in flux.
