Up/Rooted

Guest Curator Dr. Aaron Rosen
November 6 – December 31, 2025

About This Exhibition

In 1989, the Jewish artist R.B. Kitaj coined the term Diasporist Art, calling for an art “in which a pariah people, an unpopular, stigmatized people, is taken up, pondered in their dilemmas.” Today, a new generation of Jewish artists is pondering what it means to be displaced or uprooted, sketching out and creating connections across many communities and identities. These explorations also take place amidst a growing climate crisis, in which the concept of being “rooted” feels ever more precarious. The artists in this exhibition, drawn from across the eastern seaboard, respond to this ecological, political, and cultural moment without shrinking from its daunting challenges. But they also dare to look beyond them, to alternative futures for entwined communities.

About the Artists

Rosalba Breazeale (they/them) is an artist, educator and studio director at 205 Ocean Ave studios based on the traditional lands of the Wabanaki Confederacy, so-called Portland, ME. They hold an MFA from the University of New Mexico and BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.Their multidisciplinary art practice encompasses analog, digital and alternative process photography, soft fiber sculpture and installation with an emphasis on regenerative practice.

Matt Jones is an artist whose paintings and drawings traverse the threshold between the quotidian and the uncanny. Anchored in the textures of daily life – domestic rituals, urban green spaces, intimate objects – his works slip into a symbolic, oneiric register where the boundaries between interior and exterior, human and spectral, dissolve. Jones’ work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. He attended the Yale University School of Art – Norfolk, received a BFA from Cooper Union, and an MFA from Hunter College. The artist lives and works in New York City.

Susan Klein is an artist living in Charleston, SC whose work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. She teaches painting at the College of Charleston. Her recent work uses symbolic and abstract language to channel ideas of creative energy and the ritualistic utility of art.

Aaron Margolis is an artist, craftsperson, teacher and luftmensch who was raised in New York and lives and works in Ellsworth, ME. Margolis sees art as “a way to create a new home for myself within myself.” He was introduced to art by his mother at an early age and in recent decades has experimented with sculpture, assemblage, paint, and any other medium or objects he finds. His work draws upon an extensive knowledge of traditional woodcarving techniques, honed through building sustainable houses from the ground up. Two of Margolis’ recent works, large-scale public menorahs, were commissioned by the Town of Searsport, ME and by the Maine Jewish Museum.

Meirav Ong is an Ashkenazi-American transdisciplinary artist who draws from her Jewish heritage as a framework to conceive of an embodied prayer practice that exists as an alternative to Judaism’s patriarchal structures. Her practice explores embodied prayer in relation to grief, Jewish mourning rituals, and Genetic Memory through textiles, clay, sound, performance and social practice. Ong holds an MFA in Fiber from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA from the University of Michigan. Her work has been exhibited nationally.

Naomi Safran-Hon ia an artist born in Oxford, England and raised in Haifa, Israel. She received her BA Summa Cum Laude from Brandeis University in Studio Art and Art History and MFA from Yale University School of Art. Safran-Hon attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Drawing and Art Omi. She is a 2023 Joan Mitchell Fellow and has exhibited nationally and internationally. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Dr. Aaron Rosen, guest curator of this exhibition, is the Executive Director of The Clemente Course in the Humanities; Founder/Director of the Parsonage Gallery; Visiting Professor of Sacred Traditions & the Arts, King’s College London.

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