Judith Greenwald

STATEMENT

DISPLACEMENT

This body of work emerged uninvited. During the dark days of Covid and after Russia had invaded Ukraine, these stark figures began to populate my canvases. Soon, I had a growing community of displaced figures, sometimes haunting and always suggestive of an unspoken narrative.

Each of these pieces is painted with a combination of oil paint and cold wax, a medium that lends itself to the experience of depth and complexity. In the process of exploring various facets of displacement, I have had the opportunity to experiment with texture, layering, and color.

The figures are rendered as silhouettes— nameless and faceless— suggesting both their anonymity and their universality. They are the 130 million people displaced worldwide due to war, famine, oppression, and the climate crisis. They are the 15 million Syrians who have been forced to leave their homes to seek safety and who continue to live in dire circumstances. They are the nearly 7 million people internally displaced in Afghanistan and over 8 million who have left the country due to conflict, violence, and natural disasters. They are the people of South Sudan, over 4 million of them, who have been forced to leave their homes and the 5.8 million Ukrainians who are wartime refugees. They are the nearly 2 million people of Gaza, most of whom are internally displaced, and the half million Israelis who have been displaced by the same conflict. They are the 21 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean who have been forced from their homes due to persecution, gang and gender-related violence, and food insecurity. They are the over 3 million people in the U.S. who were displaced by natural disasters in 2023. They are the unhoused living on our streets.

These are the physical displacements that have become so characteristic of our times. There are emotional and spiritual displacements as well. Covid brought deep isolation, disconnection, and dislocation. And as climate disasters rattle our world and as desperate people search for stability in authoritarian leaders, a kind of soul sickness permeates our beings.

None of us is free from displacement. It is incumbent on us to bear witness, to see and acknowledge injustice, to show up with empathy, compassion, and solidarity at very least. Bearing witness inherently involves making visible those who are invisible and recognizing that each person has a story. I invite you to imagine the narratives that accompany each of these paintings and, in so doing, to join me in bearing witness to “this besieged world.”

—Judith Greenwald, Ceres Gallery, 2024