ARIEL BASSON FREIBERG
ARIEL BASSON FREIBERG (SHE/HER) , born in Texas of Iraqi/Israeli background, has a MFA in painting from Boston University and a BA from Smith College. She has had multiple solo shows and including exhibitions at Miller Yezerski Gallery, Dartmouth College, Tufts Art Gallery, Danforth Museum, Montserrat College of Art and the Art Center of Macedonia.
What kind of process went into organizing βLove & Saltβ? What were some of your biggest considerations with this project?
Feeling an urgency to visualize my familyβs refugee story, I began experimenting with cement and mortar as a painting medium in 2016. My grandfather had a celebrated fabric shop in Baghdad in the central market, but after fleeing with his family to Israel in the 1950s, due to religious and political persecution, he eventually established a construction business, building apartments in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, Israel.
Fleeing his homeland of endless generations led to his medium transformation from silks and fabrics to cement. This realization inspired me to work with cement in my own retelling of our family story through the installation of Love + Salt.
In 2021 I received an Arts and Culture grant from Combined Jewish Philanthropies for my proposal of Love and Salt. This generous grant supported the fabrication of Love + Salt.
One of the first steps in forming this project was to fabricate the cement paintings as shards of memories. Typically, my work hangs on walls, so I had to conceive of a new substrate that would both be free standing and able to live outdoors. Since the work is addressing issues of rooting after displacement due to religious and political persecution, I wanted the work to look like shards of memories. That is my experience with unraveling my family narratives and understanding what my grandparents, my mom and her siblings survived through.
Often immigrants and refugees have to sever parts of themselves to fit into their new society. Iβm curious about fixing the parts in space, like landmarks of memory.
Love + Salt is a public artwork in two parts: in-person art installation and a virtual platform. The in-person part is an installation of cement paintings at a public site, featuring a visual narrative of my familyβs immigration story from Baghdad. Images of landscapes, amulets, people, interior scenes, Judeo-Iraqi holiday customs make up the visuals. Using a combination of paint, cement and glitter these works function as contemporary frescos.
The virtual part of Love + Salt can be visited through the QR code next to the installations. Guests to the website will be invited to share their own commonly used terms for love and curses. This project will be open to communities in the Boston area and beyond. To make this project inclusive, the website encourages guests to write their phrases in their native tongue. The website has a survey link for guests to share their favorite terms of love and insults.
This idea was born out of my familyβs Baghdadi dialect, which is a dying language. Terms of love and insult seem to be the most commonly shared parts of the language to my generation and Iβm curious how other people engage with their own most expressive and extreme verbal expressions.
How did your relationship with art and artistic expression begin?
My mother has a background in art history and anthropology, so at a young age I was exposed to the arts and historic objects, like oil lamps. My fascination paint goes back to a formative trip to Florence. At age 12, I was captivated by Sandro Botticelliβs βPrimavera.β Its mythical subject matter and sheer scale, every corner packed with over 500 types of flora and fauna, lay the foundations for the work I would later create. Botticelliβs masterful technique opened my eyes to a painterβs ability to wield their medium, bring together the softness of the brush and the clarity of pigment to move the viewer.
As a student at the High School for Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, Texas, I began to exploring ideas of feminine identity and my heritage through painting, installation, and sculpture. In my undergraduate studies at Smith College, I narrowed my focus to two-dimensional mediums. I earned a degree in psychology and studio art, and then immediately continued my practice while receiving an MFA at Boston University.
Figurative painting emerged as a subject through which I could fully explore the interaction between society and feminine identity. Iβm interested in a body that is in a state of transition, a state of being revealed and concealed at the same time. Having grown up not fully understanding the Iraqi Jewish side of my family, the gaps of my understanding of my heritage and my family refugee story fueled my artistic impulses.
How did you arrive at the Brookline Arts Center? What sparks your interest in our organization?
I was especially interested in BAC for the active park and garden accompanying the BAC. As Love + Salt is the largest public art work I have fabricated, I was looking to expand the audience for the work, inviting chance encounters that public art sparks.
What are three things that you would want the BAC community to know about you?
I was born in Texas of Iraqi/Israeli background. Since 2015 I have focused on my multicultural identity, with research on Iraqi Jews, my personal family history and the complex fissures my family has with our identity. As the eldest American daughter, I became the one who asked the questions, such as when did we stop speaking Judeo Arabic, the endangered language dialect of Iraqi Jews in Baghdad, or why do we have stuffed zucchini and stuffed rice balls for the New Year? I am curious how the Jewish identity encompasses a diverse range of cultures, creative expression and Jewish philosophy
If you had to sum up a message/lesson behind your recent work in one sentence, what would it be?
The will to live is strong. Despite the uprooting and extreme challenges my family faced as refugees, now they are thriving and rooted with their growing families and their new home countries.
What has been the most challenging part of your journey as an artist? And what has been the most rewarding?
When I start a painting, there is always that thrill of not knowing exactly how itβs going to come together. Discovery through the process is key in my practice. Sometimes that can be scary and overwhelming, but persistence and curiosity guides us to the other side, to a place of resolution.
What is one piece of advice you would give to an aspiring artist?
Let the medium of choice guide you, be willing to take risks β itβs the most enriching way to learn about your own practice as an artist.
When youβre not at the BAC, where can people find you?
Often you can find me at my studio in Somerville at Vernon Street Studios, and I am a Professor at Brandeis University in the Fine Arts department.
Contact Ariel at afreiberg@brandeis.edu
