Street Orientalism

Affenfaust gallery, Hamburg

A way of honoring an aesthetic I once adored, of reclaiming it from the infantilizing, hypersexualized male gaze that shaped it.“Street” because these fabrics are no longer ancient silks and exotic draperies, but hoodies, sportswear, and the language of contemporary urban dress.It is also my way of reclaiming the archetype of the Jewess.In nineteenth-century Orientalist painting, the Jewess appeared again and again: dark-haired, veiled, draped in silks, cast as seductress, temptress, and danger. She was rarely portrayed as a woman in her own right, but as a projection—a Christian fantasy of sin and corruption, both desired and condemned.Behind this fantasy lay a deeper antisemitic reality. Jews were everywhere: rooted in countless cities, languages, and cultures, yet persistently portrayed as foreign, marked as outsiders, and told they did not belong. The figure of the Jewess became the perfect vessel for this contradiction—present and visible, yet perpetually cast as alien.

Dark-haired.
Veiled.
Draped in silks.
Desired and despised in the same breath.
A seductress.
A temptress.
A danger.
Not a woman — a projection.
But what happens when the unconventional, rebellious Jewish woman paints herself?

I am the Jewess.