Forgiveness ritual Stone, Color digital print, 2017
“Our bodies are live blenders of heritage, history, family, rituals and beliefs” says Ronit Levin Delgado, and sets off to a long-standing personal and artistic journey to hunt down her past. Project Forgiveness is a multimedia installation that is one of the results of this ongoing journey that attempts to cope with the past and explores a variety of possible meanings of the act of forgiving, as well as perhaps a longing for being forgiven.
“My father, Julio Delgado Rojas, left my mom (born in Moldova and immigrated to Israel), my twin brother and I (at the age of 7) in Israel and returned to his country, Paraguay. He passed away four years ago, before I had a chance to meet him again. This video is a collaboration that I dreamed to create with my father, who was the lead singer of ‘Los Tress Paraguayos’, while he was still alive. An irony of fate, my father passed away on Yom Kippur, day of atonement, the purest and holiest day of the year in Judaism.” Having this very personal and deeply poignant story as her starting point, the artists takes off to Paraguay for the first time in her life, meets her paternal family, and through this encounter, revisits the cultural notions of rituals, beliefs and more subjective ones: atonement and repentance.
At the exhibition, the artist provides the audience two primary approaches to her personal story: a documentary video of her self-discovery Odyssey journey in Paraguay including her meetings with the local paternal family first time, which was documented the encounters from the first moment onwards, thanks to the accompanying photographer Mara Catalan; and a subjective approach to this journey, a three channel video installation that let’s the audience witness her collection and interpretation of rituals -mainly driven from on Jewish traditions and Native American local Guaraní rituals- to cope with the loss and forgiveness of the beloved one.
Gallery Sensei invites a duo exhibition by Vita Eruhimovitz and Ronit Levin Delgado, with the curatorial support of Isin Önol, in collaboration with Chashama. The two exhibitions juxtaposes two personal perspectives on contemporary identity and its formation, based on self-reflection and self expression. Levin Delgado’s work approaches them from instinctual and emotional perspective. Shared motives and seemingly opposing attitudes toward artistic practices resonate simultaneously in the space.
This project is made with the support of the COJECO Blueprint Fellowship, funded by UJA-Federation of NY and Genesis Philanthropy Group.
Project Forgiveness Performance
