Solo show, light weight, opened on september 26, 2024 at beit chabot, oakland, ca.
A Calendar of Stones, 2024 — Rocks and pebbles collected from many places over many years, rhinestones, googly eyes, and grief stones.
i am my prayer, 2023 — Hand-stitched cotton thread on cotton Bedikah cloth dyed with onion skins, garlic skins and iron, 3 x 3 in on 18 x 24 canvas. (on left)
Prayer towels, 2023 - present — Hand-stitched cotton thread on cotton dish towels, hand dyed with indigo, Cochineal and pomegranate skins, mounted on canvas with rhinestones, 16 x 20 inches. (on right)
Press Release - LIGHT weight: A Solo Exhibition of Meirav Ong, JCC East Bay Artist-in-Residence
LIGHT weight
A solo exhibition by Meirav Ong
September 26 - October 13, 2024
The JCC East Bay is pleased to announce the culmination of Meirav Ong’s time as artist-in-residence at the JCC with the opening of her solo exhibition, LIGHT weight. On view from September 26 - October 13, 2024, the work in this show pokes at the phrase lightweight to reveal the depth and presence often contained within things assumed to be inconsequential or lacking in significance. That Beit Chabot is an actual house, emphasizes the ways in which Ong’s work considers domestic spaces as sacred sites of prayer. Whether the sacredness of home is by choice or by force, due to women being historically excluded from participating in Jewish institutional religious spaces, is immaterial. Ong is embracing traditions of spontaneous prayer, like Tekhines and Hitbodedut, to play with Holiness. Through embroidered dish towels and an installation of bedazzled rock cairns, Ong is bringing light to the weight of reverence, loneliness and grief.