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Forest Reid and Bonny Nahmias on Whimsy and Transcendence

Thursday, September 12, 2024 | 11:30am

ADMISSION: Free with Museum admission

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2024-09-12 11:30:00 UTC2024-09-12 23:00:00 UTC America/Los_AngelesThe CJM - 736 Mission St, San Francisco, CAForest Reid and Bonny Nahmias on Whimsy and TranscendenceIn this lively in-gallery discussion, hear from California Jewish Open artists Forest Reid and Bonny Nahmias on artwork, identity, and the whimsical nature of their works. Reid, a sound designer and installation artist, and Nahmias, an interdisciplinary artist, both explore themes of cultural identity, heritage, and sociopolitical issues through their diverse media. This program will delve into their shared interests in Jewish mysticism, repurposed archives, and the intersection of personal and collective history, offering unique perspectives on contemporary Jewish art. 

In this lively in-gallery discussion, hear from California Jewish Open artists Forest Reid and Bonny Nahmias on artwork, identity, and the whimsical nature of their works. Reid, a sound designer and installation artist, and Nahmias, an interdisciplinary artist, both explore themes of cultural identity, heritage, and sociopolitical issues through their diverse media. This program will delve into their shared interests in Jewish mysticism, repurposed archives, and the intersection of personal and collective history, offering unique perspectives on contemporary Jewish art. 

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About the Series

This program is part of the series Connecting with Jewishness through Art, a monthly series of gallery programs with artists featured in the California Jewish Open, discussing how their artistic practice expresses their Judaism or Jewish identity. At each program, two artists will come together in conversation with each other, the artwork, and the audience to provide context and insights into the complexities of their artwork.

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About the artists
Bonny Nahmias
Bonny Nahmias

Bonny Nahmias was born and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel. She moved to the United States in 2006 at the age of eighteen in protest of Israel’s mandatory military service. Nahmias first lived in Brooklyn, NY, where she explored performance art and the theatrical world. She later moved to San Francisco and received her BFA from California College of the Arts in sculpture and visual studies in 2016.  She has maintained involvement in arts organizations in New York and San Francisco and exhibited her work at Root Division, Heron Arts, Hubbell Street Galleries, Southern Exposure, SOMArts, and the Asian Art Museum. Through a broad range of media that includes sculpture, performance and video, Nahmias examines human conflicts and sociopolitical subjects that relate to her background and upbringing in Israel. Torn between the desire to reach for and reject her birthplace, the results of her work can be seen as satirical love letters to her past and present. 

Forest Reid
Forest Reid

Forest Reid is a Bay Area–based sound designer, composer, and installation artist. His audio-visual work engages with Jewish mysticism, Yiddish culture, and repurposed archives. He has diverse experience with sound including archival preservation, data sonification, and studio engineering. He has created installation work for the La Jolla Playhouse and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Reid’s work has been featured in the Institute of Contemporary Art in San Francisco, the Without Walls (WOW) festival in San Diego and Sukkahwood in New York. He was a 2023 LABA Bay fellow. 

About the Exhibition

California Jewish Open

The Museum’s first major open call exhibition invited Jewish-identifying artists in California to submit artworks in response to a central question: How are artists looking to the many aspects of Jewish culture, identity, and community to foster, reimagine, hold, or discover connection? The resulting exhibition brings together the work of forty-seven artists reflecting on their connection to Judaism, the world, and their own history. Through a wide range of media, including paintings, sculptures, interactive video games, video works, photographs, and more, the California Jewish Open illustrates some of the myriad ways in which these artists’ Jewish identity informs their connection to the world at large—and offers a window into the universal human need for connection in all its complexity.

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Supporters

Support for the California Jewish Open is generously provided by Judith and Robert Aptekar. The Contemporary Jewish Museum is supported in part by a grant from Grants for the Arts.

Image Credit

Bonnhy Nahmias, The Orchestra Of Space Holders, 2020. Courtesy the artist.