When Granite Amit began meeting with an Orthodox rabbi two years ago in Jerusalem, she did so privately. The purpose of their meetings was to study Kabbalah, the ancient practice of Jewish mysticism traditionally restricted to those who are at least 40 years old, male and married.
“Kabbalah is believed by some to be dangerous because it can be so powerful that it may twist your mind if you’re not strong enough,” says Amit, an Israel-born artist and Reform Jew who lives in Chicago. “But the rabbi I met with thought it was dangerous not to study it.”
For Amit, the study of Kabbalah and other sacred texts is integral to her life and artwork. Her three-dimensional installations reflect her fascination with the ecstatic, prophetic type of mysticism, where the goal is to realize and fulfill human potential.
She believes that life is a journey of self-discovery, of returning to our original perfected selves.
“We all have the potential to become what we know we can become,” says Amit, whose first name is pronounced Graneet.
In form and spirit, Amit’s artwork stimulates and challenges the viewer. One piece may layer Plexiglas sheets painted with a phrase from Hebrew Scripture and the English translation. Another piece may highlight one Hebrew word, illuminated in neon lighting, or may contain an actual faucet fused to the Plexiglas. Her last exhibit in November at Artemisia Gallery in Chicago included an installation offering 10 interpretations of the original story of Creation, designed as an exercise for orienting the self.
“Her art is a kind of scripture,” says Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, emeritus rabbi at K.A.M. Isaiah Israel Congregation in Hyde Park. “It’s a kind of retelling, a reshowing, re-presenting the words of the Bible and of the tradition. I think she makes them vivid. . . . And she chooses the ones that move her and she shows them to us in a way that, I would say, confronts us.”
In several pieces, Amit annotates fragments of original Hebrew text with her own interpretative gloss. But she is well aware that these texts may be construed differently; each viewer must determine what the imagery and language of each piece means.
Not only does she believe that viewers bring their own interpretation to her artwork, they also possess their own perspective of life and reality. What matters, she says, is how people understand their life and experiences, and what they make of them. Even if a person has been exposed to difficult conditions in life, that doesn’t necessarily mean that he or she is going to suffer as a result.
“So rather than being a victim of events, you are more likely to become a victim of your own perceptions and systems of beliefs of who you are or what you should be,” she says.
Woven into her life story and art are threads of theology and psychology. Besides formal training in video performance and art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she has a master’s degree in expressive therapy from Lesley College in Cambridge, Mass.
Her current works focus on the Kabbalistic notions of self-realization and self-actualization, to encounter what she calls the “true self.”
“It’s a life-span process of eliminating, and finding and losing and redefining goals and coming in touch with the self,” Amit says. “It’s a very universal process, and I don’t think that theology or psychology has the title for it. This is what we are about, the process of becoming who we are, of finding our unique interpretation and understanding that this is what is expected of us.”
In creating her current exhibition, “As-If-Ism 2,” she continues to develop her psychological perspectives on the self that begin with an examination of sacred Hebrew texts. “`As-If-Ism’ is an imaginative school of thought that helps train you to gain the freedom to choose who you are and how you arrange the story of your life around you,” Amit says.
Even though she evokes themes from the Hebrew Bible and the Kabbalist tradition, Amit insists that the subject matter is universal.
“I believe the concepts that operate in the Hebrew Bible, operate in other texts, such as the Veda or the Koran, and other bodies of literature,” Amit says. The Veda is a sacred Hindu text and the Koran a sacred Muslim text.
The daughter of David Palombo, the Israeli sculptor best known for his iron gates to the Knesset and the doors to the Hall of Remembrance at the Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, Amit was named after her father’s preferred medium for sculpting.
When she was born, Palombo was working primarily with stone. Amit feels lucky to have been named at that time in his career.
“Shortly after that, he began to build with his main material, which was iron,” recalls Amit, 42. “So it could have been worse. My name could have been metal or bronze.”
But nothing about Amit resembles the immutable qualities of stone. Instead, her concept of reality and the self flows out of her desire to speak to a more common level of human experiences; to highlight the Kabbalistic process of shaping and becoming fully realized selves.
Amit’s art integrates different materials and draws upon the various disciplines that have influenced her.
“I think it took me awhile to find that format of expression, the right combination which requires me to be sensitive to the inner dynamics among them,” she says.
In a similar vein, her art blends ancient theological traditions and post-modern psychological concepts.
“The wonderful thing about Amit is that on the one hand, she is rooted in the Hebrew tradition,” says Rabbi Wolf. “She knows the language, she knows the Scripture. But she’s also kind of new age. And that’s the interesting dialectic. It’s very old and it’s also very hip. And I think she brings it off.”
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Granite Amit’s “As-If-Ism 2” is on display at the A.R.C. Gallery, 734 N. Milwaukee Ave., from Jan. 31 to Feb. 24. The opening reception is Feb. 2 from 5-8 p.m. Call 312-733-2787 for information.
