Visibility, identity, and the art in between – A performance by Sheri Avraham at VIENNA ART WEEK 2025
As part of the festival, the museum is presenting the performance “Mizrachi Futurism: Situated Systems” by Sheri Avraham, which ties in with this year’s theme of VIENNA ART WEEK, LEARNING SYSTEMS.
© Jorit Aust
From a Mizrahi, queer perspective, this work explores how cultural memory and origin, as well as digital structures, help shape identity. Through ritual gestures, embodied presence, and media fragmentation, a critical space for knowledge production emerges, bringing the fragmentary, the opaque, and the hidden to the forefront.
During VIENNA ART WEEK, the recently opened exhibition “Black Jews, White Jews? On Skin Colors and Prejudices” (October 22, 2025 – April 26, 2026, Museum Dorotheergasse) will also be on view.
© JMW
With this exhibition, the Jewish Museum Vienna explores the complex interrelationships between skin color, identity, and belonging. Contemporary artworks, historical documents, and objects illustrate how Jews have been viewed, described, and portrayed in different eras and contexts—as white or non-white, Black or non-Black, as victims of discrimination or as perpetrators of discrimination. The exhibition invites visitors to question stereotypical notions and to critically reflect on skin color as a social and historically conditioned construct.
A central feature of the exhibition is the commissioned work “By Any Other Name …” by the Jewish-Syrian-American artist Lenore Mizrachi-Cohen. The work addresses the disappearance of Arab-Jewish first names and, with it, the erasure of history, language, and collective memory. Delicate flowers emerge from the calligraphic forms of traditional Arabic names, their colors transitioning from dark to light. This fading symbolizes the disappearance of the names—and, at the same time, the diversity of (Arab-)Jewish identities that often remain invisible.
© Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, University Archive
Together, the exhibition, artwork, and performance weave a dense tapestry of themes: visibility, identity, memory, and self-assertion. Through this, the Jewish Museum Vienna demonstrates how contemporary art and historical reflection intertwine to keep the dialogue on Jewish identity alive today.
The performance Mizrachi Futurism: Situated Systems will take place as part of VIENNA ART WEEK 2025 on November 13 at 6:30 p.m. at the Jewish Museum Vienna (Dorotheergasse 11, 1010 Vienna).
Further information about the performance as part of VIENNA ART WEEK 2025 can be found here.
An overview of our entire program during VIENNA ART WEEK 2025 can be found here.
