Curbs and Stoops Active Space in cooperation with Bushwick Open Studios will be presenting a multi-exhibition and open studio event. On view June 3-5. Opening reception June 4, 7pm-10pm with live painting by Veng RWK and Nathan Pickett, DJ Grimace, and sponsored by Dogfish Head Craft Ales. Directional Float

Curated by Ashley Zelinskie and Brian Maller (Curbs & Stoops)

This is the second exhibition in the Curbs & Stoops Active Space. It will feature work from artists Sebastian Vallejo, Rachel Labine, Jason Mones, Jonathan Chapline, Ted Gahl, Alan Fleming, Sarah Young, Samuel Adams, Gina Beaver, Fedrich Torres Ondina , and Chinatsu Ikeata.

Performance by Sarah Young on June 4th at 8pm. As old as the world is a visualization of Talmudic text brought into the contemporary realm by staging the issue justice onto the female body as directed by the textual source itself. I take rabbinic interpretation found in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 36b-37a), which uses a source of erotic poetry from the Songs of Songs (Thy navel is like a round goblet full of fragrant wine; thy belly is like a heap of wheat hedged about with roses) to illustrate justice, specifically using female body imagery to symbolize a Sanhedrin, a rabbinic court. I actualize this bizarre metaphor in a series of photographs. To do this I asked two women who each are having their own struggle against an establishment of religion to collaborate with me in making images. One woman dropped out of a rabbinic institution and one is being challenged by orthodox male rabbis on her conversion to Judaism. Here the woman’s’personal narrative becomes instrumental in telling the hidden meaning of the ancient text. In the performance I will continue the bizarre relationship between charged female sexuality and ancient justice by placing a live model in the life sized diorama, who has had her own unique struggle with religion and place another throughout the room singing the classic biblical text in a challenging new way.