February 10, 2017

“Sukkah Studio” article in J Weekly

Sukkah Studio was an installation and demonstration in the lobby of the Contemporary Jewish Museum in 2017.

text from the article

Each day during Sukkot, the Contemporary Jewish Museum invited museumgoers into a barebones, wood-frame sukkah in the museum lobby. No admission required!

The day I stopped by, photographer Ari Salomon was in the sukkah with his stunning panorama photography, showing others how to get in on the fun with their phones.

He brought his large-format printer, a huge machine that was more desk than desktop. After taking their own panoramas in front of the building or in the lobby or wherever, museumgoers were to email their picture to Salomon, who would then print it out right then and there.

Hanging in the sukkah were Salomon’s long, twisting panoramas of urban settings. His work is evocative of Sukkot in the way it bends reality around the viewer. To enter a sukkah is to have the world warped around you in a new way. The sukkah reorients us by wrapping us up in the embrace of something temporary but still comforting; we are inside, but the outside remains visible and tangible.

I love the lobby of CJM. It’s a long, slender, tall space, topped with an intricate overhead piece of art, “Lamp of the Covenant,” that stretches the length of the ceiling. On what appear to be moving tracks (but not really) is a series of globes, planets, heavenly bodies and light bulbs of many shapes. I find myself staring up and admiring this piece whenever I’m there.

But this time, I had Salomon to help me see it in a new way. With my phone I made a panorama of the sprawling piece of art above.

As an aside, Salomon also related his work to shaking the lulav, a Sukkot ritual that orients us in space by shaking the arba minim in six cardinal directions. I quite like that.

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Publish date: February 10, 2017
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