Thought-provoking images characterize a politically-charged art exhibition currently being displayed in the seventh floor Humanities gallery.
\Carrying a Straw to Egypt,"" on display until April 9, contains several Middle East inspired paintings. UW-Madison Master of Fine Arts candidate Julie Weitz was inspired to create these works after a two month immersion in Israeli culture. While she did not produce any extensive pieces of art work during her stay in Israel, she acknowledges the visit has immensely impacted her personal style.
""I had a lot of intense experiences there; I really was involved in Israeli society,"" Weitz said.
The title of her exhibition, ""Carrying a Straw to Egypt"" comes from a Yiddish proverb.
""It's a Yiddish proverb translated and if you think about what that might mean in a Jewish context, carrying a straw to Egypt is a futile, useless act,"" Weitz said.
The reference to a ""useless act"" is an ironic way for Weitz to question the validity of art.
Weitz's exhibition includes 11 drawings and four to five large paintings that vary in style from photographic realism to cartoon-like graphics. Her work features media images of Israel, Palestine and Iraq along with caricatures of suicide bombers, Jewish fundamentalists and Saddam Hussein. Patterns of bright colors and glossy media characterize her paintings. Weitz especially likes to work with oil paints.
In ""Awed and Shocked,"" Weitz uses a combination of imagery of fireworks, a Hawaiian print and a charcoal drawing to represent the American bombings in Iraq.
Weitz represents Jerusalem with different characters, both Jewish and Palestinian, sketched in different styles, with hands raised in ""Raise Your Hands."" On a literal level, the painting examines the different meanings raised hands can stand for; on a symbolic level the painting examines the idea of Zionism.
Weitz's drawings, unlike her paintings, are comprised of more straightforward portraits of leaders and members of Israeli and Middle Eastern society.
One humorous drawing features a charcoal sketch of Saddam Hussein's head, after he had been caught, attached to the body of a robust old woman.
Another drawing features what appears to be two men shouting the Hebrew word for peace, ""Shalom."" Ironically, the two men are from a newspaper clipping about an anti-American rally in Pakistan.
Overall, both Weitz's paintings and drawings are meant to make viewers look deeper into the conflict in the Middle East and Israel.
""I think that there are a lot of myths about what Israel is for American Jews. I think the reality of Israel is a lot of different things. It's amazing; it's beautiful; it's also really complicated. There is an enormous conflict there and I think that there are a lot of things that, in terms of my art, that I would like to make people see more clearly,"" she said.
