Towards a Progressive neo-Hasidism
The world of Jewish learning has traditionally been dominated by the elite male practice of text study. Gashmius understands itself it be in the lineage of those who are attempting to expand our conceptions of "Jewish knowledge" to include non-textual sources. Taking our cue from Jericho Vincent's piece, we think of our featured art not as mere adornment to written content, but as genuine neo-Hasidic content in and of itself.
Hannah Altman
Hannah Altman is a Jewish-American artist from New Jersey and based in Boston.
She holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her photographs portray lineage, folklore, memory, and narrative. Her work has been extensively exhibited nationally and internationally, and has been published by the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Artforum, and British Journal of Photography, among others. Her photobook Kavana (2020), published by Kris Graves Projects, is housed in notable permanent collections including the MoMa Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art Thomas J Watson Library. She was a Critical Mass finalist in 2020, received the Lensculture Critics' Choice Award and was included in the Silver Eye Center for Photography Silver List in 2021, received the Portraits Hellerau Photography Award and became the inaugural Blanksteen Artist in Residence at the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale in 2022, and was selected as an Aperture Portfolio Prize Finalist in 2023. You can see more of her work on her website hannahaltmanphot.com or follow her instagram @hannahaltman
Henry Rosenberg
Henry Rosenberg (b. 1997, New York, NY) is an American artist and current first year MFA candidate at Tyler School of Art in Printmaking. Informed by his background in Art History and Visual Culture, Rosenberg’s studio practice involves connecting personal and public memories, and using manufactured fragments of stories, or incomplete narratives to respond to, and make observations about, current events with culture and history in mind. He acknowledges the absurdity, tragedy, and humor of the modern world by constructing narratives around masculinity, religion, sports and power structures. Much of his narratives are derived from Jewish familial folklore that connect interstitial spaces of history, politics, and popular culture. The stories he tells through his work creates a space where ideas, references, and crosscultural populace meet in seemingly innocent spaces. He hopes the narratives he constructs encourage a multiplicity of interpretations, seeing the work as he sees the world as a lively place filled with different perspectives and viewpoints to expand and amplify our imagination. To see more of his work you can visit his website henrydavidrosenberg.com or follow his instagram @hen_pen_
Rena Yehuda Newman
Rena Yehuda Newman (they/them) is a Jewish, transgender comics artist, writer, artist, and illustrator living and working in Brooklyn, NY. The former editor in chief of New Voices Magazine, Rena Yehuda now freelances illustration, graphic design and writing, and facilitates educational workshops on gender and comics. They independently publish zines and books, including "The Testosterone Survey Zine", which documented the qualitative experiences of nearly 400 people medically transitioning on testosterone. Rena Yehuda cares deeply about communal memory, the power of art and storytelling, and the link between sexuality and spirituality. To see more of Rena Yehuda's work you can follow them on instagram @Rena.yehuda or check out their gumroad store at renayehuda.gumroad.com