Photography Professor Amy Friend presents Eternal Light at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre in Toronto. 

November 2 > 30, 2016
The Gallery at the J
Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre
750 Spadina Ave. (at Bloor), Toronto Ontario

In Jewish tradition the death of a loved one is commemorated by lighting a yahrzeit candle, often with a prayer beginning with a passage from Proverbs, “. . . the lamp of the Eternal is the soul of humanity . . .” For most Jews who perished in the Holocaust, and so many who died before, there is no surviving family to observe this ritual. It therefore falls to future generations. For a visual interpretation of the theme Future of Memory, Neuberger HEW commissioned artist Amy Friend. Exploring the notion of light, Friend used archival photographs of European Jewry before the Shoah from UJA Federation’s Ontario Jewish Archives, Blankenstein Family Heritage Centre. She carefully perforated each reproduced photo and shined light though the small openings, bringing new light into the image and recreating it as a unique work of art; a poignant and eternal tribute to life, love, and loss.

Amy Friend is a Canadian Artist and Assistant Professor of Fine Arts at Brock University. Friend has exhibited nationally and internationally, exploring issues related to history, memory, personal archives and phenomenology. She works with the medium of photography pushing its anticipated boundaries through installation and material experimentation. Recent exhibitions include Assorted Boxes of Ordinary Life (Rodman Hall, Canada), Heaven on Earth at the DongGang Museum of Photography (South Korea) and at the GetxoPhoto Festival (Spain). She has been selected as a top 50 photographer by Critical Mass International Photography Competition for three years running. Amy Friend is represented by C3 Arts.

Exhibit Curated by Mira Goldfarb. Generously co-sponsored by Sally & Mark Zigler in honour of their parents, Fanny & Bernard Dov Laufer and Etty & Salo Zigler.