Clik here to view.
An artist’s first solo institutional exhibition is something to celebrate, considering the time, work and dedication it takes to get there.
Such is the case with transdisciplinary artist Nicki Green, whose exhibition “Firmament” at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco opens Sept. 5 with a community event featuring a kombucha tasting, gallery hour, drop-in pickling demos, and an artist’s talk with Green, collaborator Eli Andrew Ramer and CJM Senior Curator Heidi Rabben.
“I’ve been in a few group shows [at CJM] and had always kind of dreamed of doing a solo show or some kind of bigger project with them, and so it was really such a gift to be invited to do this, to develop this solo show,” says Green, an assistant professor in ceramics at Alfred University in upstate New York.
Featuring sculptures, ritual objects, ceramic vessels, drawings and fiber pieces, “Firmament” —a Book of Genesis reference to the dome that separates the heavens and the earth—explores liminality and fluidity in relation to Judaism, transness and queerness.
“The work is so much about Jewishness and about what it means, feels like and offers me to really engage my Judaism directly and ask questions about how I show up in my trans body and my Jewish body in this world. … My art making, my art practice, has always been about the way that I engage the world and material and space creatively—and my transness feels like an extension of that,” adds Green, a former Californian with a bachelor’s of fine arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute and a master’s degree in art practice from the University of California, Berkeley.
”It’s really such a joy to be teaching and making work on the East Coast now, but still be able to come back and show work and continue to develop my relationship with the Bay Area,” she says.
Clik here to view.
The idea for her CJM show stemmed from her consideration of “firmament” as a biblical reference to the separation, or divide, of water between heaven and earth. She gave particular thought to the firmament’s in-between space as a material form and concept.
“As a queer person [and] as a trans person, I have so much interest in this idea of ‘liminal’ as a way to talk about transness or queerness, this kind of in-betweenness. And so the idea [of] firmament becomes this in-between—a liminal material or liminal gesture—that has real material capacity and agency. … I built the show around this idea of the firmament as a trans gesture, a kind of splitting in-between gesture.”
The exhibition is built around a firmament —a large tent—featuring a woven cloth by artist Ricky Dwyer stretched across its top as the tent’s “skin” and a ritual bath inside, symbolizing a mikvah, from which queer and trans individuals have been excluded.
“When you walk into the space, it’s the first thing you see—this massive tent, this tabernacle structure, that’s built out of wood,” she said.
Clik here to view.
Situated in the gallery around the tent are life-sized figurative sculptures, which Green calls “angels,” as well as vessel forms, all references to fermentation.
Said Green, “I’m really interested in fermentation as a transformative, domestic ritual that I’ve theorized to be a trans or a queer ritual practice of turning, say, cucumbers into pickles or cabbage into sauerkraut. There’s this kind of magical trans capacity of these rituals.”
The ceramic “angels”—their bodies and genders intentionally complex—each weigh roughly 500 pounds. They wear glazed dresses and pose and lounge in various positions; some hold crocks and jars.
“Some of them have double heads and are very divine in their embodiment. … I was really trying to imagine [and] materialize a space where a divine transness can exist or be proposed in and around this tent, which is the vehicle for this. It’s a very luxurious space of ritual, community and togetherness.”
The figurative sculptures evoke fluidity, and each has a forklift mechanism built into it. In the exhibit, the angels sit on shipping crates.
“It signals the ways in which these objects are not just magically here. They don’t just arrive; they need to sort of travel through space. And they’re meant to be moved and reoriented and not be fixed,” Green said.
Green intends to inspire considerations of movement in relation to Judaism and personal embodiment. She says, “I think that modeling that or presenting that as not just a potential way of engaging with Jewishness, but actually as a substantive way of considering a Jewish identity and Jewish community dynamics, offers something else as an alternative.
“I want to believe that there’s a possibility for other folks to see that and feel empowered to make decisions or engage themselves, their body and the world around them in a creative way as well that centers this idea of fluidity and movement and autonomy. We get to make these decisions, and I think that transness is literally the embodiment of that agency that we have over how we show up in the world. I just think that there’s so much power in claiming that agency,” she adds.
In addition to “Firmament,” Green has another exhibition, “Eye of the Fountain,” running Sept. 6-Nov. 16 at the gallery CULT Aimee Friberg in San Francisco.
The shows relate to each other, she says: “It‘s this kind of balance. This second exhibition of somewhat different work involves engaging in; if the firmament is about this upward expanse, then ‘Eye of the Fountain’ is this downward expanse or thinking about the surface of the water and water ritual as a kind of trans practice and ritual as well.”
Green, who has been busy preparing for the two shows while maintaining her teaching role, admits that returning to the Bay Area for the openings has taken her away from campus.
“We just started [the fall semester] last week. My very wonderful, understanding students and colleagues have all really supported me in getting the semester going and then taking off for a week so I could go finish installing and then open these shows. It never ends—in a good way—but it’s a lot. It’s been a very full year and a half,” she says.
“Nicki Green: Firmament” runs Sept. 5 to Feb. 2, 2025 at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission St., San Francisco. Admission is $14-$16. Visit the cjm.org. To register for the Sept. 5 community opening, go here.
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