CAI artist-in residence to present first U.S. museum exhibition of her work

Bracha L. Ettinger, an Israeli-born painter, philosopher, psychoanalyst and writer, whose celebrated pieces have made her among the most prominent visual artists in France and Israel, will present the first-ever museum exhibition of her work in the United States as part of her residency in UB’s Creative Arts Initiative.

In addition to the exhibition, Ettinger’s residency — from April 23 through May 17 — includes one-on-one meetings with UB’s MFA students through individual studio visits, a custom-designed three-week graduate-level seminar, gallery talks and a public lecture.

The exhibition “BRACHA: Pietà-Eurydice-Medusa,” curated by Rachel Adams Miller, UB’s senior curator of exhibitions, opens May 5 with a 6 p.m. reception at the UB Anderson Gallery. It features a range of works from more than three decades, including oil paintings — often created over several years — drawings, notebooks and three video works that address the themes of loss, love and trauma within the context of the atrocities of war and traces of memory of the tragedy of the Holocaust. An associated catalogue featuring photographic reproductions of Ettinger’s work, along with essays by prominent scholars in psychoanalysis and art history, will accompany the exhibition.

BRACHA will continue through July 29.

Ettinger’s custom-designed graduate seminar, titled “Memory’s Wound is a Space With-in: Depth-space and Carriance beyond Abstraction versus Empathy,” will present new reflections on the relationship between psychoanalysis and visual art.

The seminar, to be held from 12:30-3:10 p.m. April 26, May 3 and May 10 in the UB Anderson Gallery, will facilitate students’ access to the works on view. The hands-on approach brings learning out of the traditional classroom setting in order to engage students in the gallery as they stand before the works under discussion.

The work Ettinger presents in this seminar will likely be included in a forthcoming collection of her essays edited by Julian Gutierrez-Albilla, professor of Spanish and Portuguese, comparative literature and gender studies at the University of Southern California.

Gutierrez-Albilla will be in Buffalo May 3-4 to discuss his own work, participate in the seminar with Ettinger and to explore how students might incorporate Ettinger’s work into their own critical discourse.

The seminar is offered in conjunction with UB’s Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture and the university’s Department of English.

Ettinger’s complete residency schedule is as follows:

• April 23-25: One-on-one studio visits with UB MFA students.
• April 24: Gary Nickard, clinical associate professor in the Department of Art, will host Ettinger in his seminar on “Art and Psychoanalysis” to discuss her artistic and theoretical work with students in the Department of Art. The seminar begins at 2 p.m., 113 Baldy Hall.
• April 26, May 3 and May 10: Ettinger’s graduate seminar, “Memory’s Wound is a Space With-in: Depth-space and Carriance beyond Abstraction versus Empathy,” 12:30-3:10 p.m., UB Anderson Gallery.
• May 5: Opening reception at 6 p.m. for “BRACHA: Pietà-Eurydice-Medusa,” UB Anderson Gallery.
• May 9: Ettinger’s gallery talk from 4:30-5:30 p.m. at the UB Anderson Gallery in which she walks with visitors through the exhibition and discusses the works on view. This event is intended especially for undergraduates, but is free to any interested UB faculty, staff and students.
• May 12: A second free gallery talk from 1-2 p.m. at the Anderson Gallery with the same format as the previous event and, again, free to UB faculty, staff and students, as well as members of the public.
• May 17: Ettinger will give a public lecture at 7 p.m. at the Burchfield Penney Art Center to educate guests about her work and its relationship to urgent contemporary social and political developments. The lecture titled, “Memory’s Wound: On Art and Ethics,” is free and open to the public.

The CAI is a university-wide initiative dedicated to the creation and production of new work upholding the highest artistic standards of excellence and fostering a complementary atmosphere of creative investigation and engagement among students, faculty, visiting artists and the community.

Through its Artist-in-Residence program and its innovative, interdisciplinary offerings for students, CAI is raising the profile of UB and Buffalo in the world of artistic expression and revitalizing the initiative’s proud tradition as a leader in contemporary art.