Private View: Alona Nelly Cohen [SHOW NOTES]​

Alona’s garments, accessories, prints and paperwork centre sustainability through the revival of traditional Sephardic craftsmanship and celebration of the plurality of the Jewish diaspora. Her work aims to revive the worlds of Amazigh Jews in the Middle East and North Africa, and identifies the risk of these worlds fading into the past.

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The artist’s upbringing is filled with stories of Sephardic Jews who continued to weave, embroider, and craft jewellery despite their displacement and exile. Her research and camera roll is full of stories of Jewish craftsmen and merchants, jewellery of Sephardi women, painted Ketubot and many other objects.

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Within the traditions of Sephardic and Mizrahi communities, textiles carry memory, ritual, and identity across generations. They hold tales of connections between communities, and of sweetness and resilience within Jewish ones. For her, these stories are the ultimate carriers of hope. Many of the painted motifs in her collection…