KUMZITS: „Nashkevellin” – Andi Arnovitz & Cornelia Renz

We share our experiences, frustrations and hopes during the pandemic in the streets of Kazimierz. Our posters hold a piece of our lives in Jerusalem, Krakow and Berlin – as women, mothers and daughters but also as artists. Do you know how Covid has made a bad situation even worse? 

Duration: ongoing 

Location: various localizations in Kazimierz 

Andi Arnovitz lives and works in Jerusalem, Israel. She is a conceptual artist, using etching, digital information and various printmaking processes, as well as fabric, thread and even porcelain to create both print series, artist books and large-scale installations. These pieces explore various tensions that exist within religion, gender and politics. 

Andi has exhibited her work in England, China, the United States, Israel, Spain, Poland, Finland, France, Germany, Lithuania, Canada, Italy, Mallorca and Bulgaria. She has had many one-woman shows and participated in multiple group shows. Her work is in many private collections in both the United States and Europe, as well as major universities, museums and institutions, including the US Library of Congress, the Israel National Library, The Museum of Art in Ein Harod, The Islamic Museum, Yeshiva University Museum, The Museum of the Diaspora, Yale University, UCLA, and The Smithsonian Museum of American History. 

Cornelia Renz lives and works in Berlin and Tel Aviv. In her work, she examines cultural role models, and points out that what is considered “natural” is actually socially shaped by these models. As a child of a working class family remote from art, but who introduced her to the culture of Bavarian churches, the preoccupation with Vanitas symbols and the ‘Holy Bodies’ – lavishly ornamented whole-body relics – is an integral part of Cornelia’s work. Recently, she has started to approach her grandmother’s biography, who once could have lived in Jerusalem but remained in Bavaria, and her father’s, who as a Romanian-German entered the SS at 17. 

In her artistic practice, Cornelia combines an initially two-dimensional technique with found footage, installations and the works of fellow artists, for example in the solo show “Heimspiel” at Kunsthalle Memmingen and Kunsthaus Erfurt in 2020. She has been awarded the Grant of the Art Cube Artists’ Studios Jerusalem, the Schloss Balmoral Fellowship, the Villa Aurora Fellowship, Los Angeles, and the Schering Foundation Art Award. 

In collaboration with Hila Lulu Lin Farah Kufer Birim, Iwona Demko, Angela Hampel, Malwina Niespodziewana, Joanna Pawlik, Tanja Seltzer, Nomi Tannhauser

Kumzits 

Come and sit, Przyjdź i usiądź, בוא/י שב/י.  

We miss being able to get together, so we created “Kumzits”, which means campfire in Hebrew. A group of us from Jerusalem, Berlin and Krakow developed eight art projects in public space. They are our proverbial campfire. Although most of us could not make it here in person, we are all around Kazimierz. Come and share a moment with us. 

For more information: https://www.jewishfestival.pl/en/kumzits-2/

This project is supported by the Foundation for Polish – German Cooperation, Goethe Institut and The City of Jerusalem. 

Cornelia Renz

Andi Arnovitz