Shoshanna Ehrlich’s art oftentimes highlights the unseen nature of human experience, and her new exhibit at the Jamaica Plain Branch Library is in that vein.
Her new exhibit, Beneath the Rustling, is now on view through March 4, as part of the library’s rotating art series.
“Through layered surfaces, deliberate erasure, embedded text fragments, and hand-crafted collage papers, her paintings suggest the subtle ‘rustling’ of memory and meaning that resides just beneath everyday perception,” a press release from the Friends of the Jamaica Plain Branch Library described her exhibition.
Ehrlich’s abstract figures tell stories of displacement, border crossing, and transformation, “while simultaneously holding space for viewers to bring their own interpretations.”
The exhibition’s title draws inspiration from a poem written by the artist’s father, Frederick M. Ehrlich, near the end of his life. In “In the Boston Museum of Fine Arts,” Frederick writes about “the spectral layers of history contained within the museum’s displays—urging readers to listen closely for what lies ‘beneath the rustling.'”
Below is the poem:
In the Boston Museum of Fine Arts
Coming from a room containing
artifacts of Oceania,
is a rustling sound.
The spirits of ancestors
cannot get through the glass
of display cases.
Beneath the rustling,
I hear the moan of wind over islands.
We need our weeping
and the ceremonies with which we bury our dead.
Acres of stones
say “Rest in Peace.”
Listen when you go into the museum,
you will hear the ancestors
who do not age, who dare not leave.
— Frederick M. Ehrlich, How the Dead Stay in Touch, Flutter Press, 2017
