May 7, 2017 Babel Through Latin-American Jewish Eyes

Artist Mirta Kupferminc and psychoanalyst Tova Shvartzman will discuss art, Judaism and psychoanalysis in conversations with University of Maryland professor Saul Sosnowski, at the Library of Congress.   

The lecture and short film will take place at noon on Friday, June 2, in Dining Room A on the sixth floor of the Library’s James Madison Memorial Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington D.C.  The event is free and open to the public.  Tickets are not needed.

The program is sponsored by the Library’s Hebrew Language Table and the Hispanic Division, in cooperation with the Embassy of Argentina.

Kupferminc is director of “LABA-BA: Laboratorio de Arte y Cultura Judía” and Shvartzman is its director of content.  The program, which supports artists’ fellowship programs in Argentina, is based on “ LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture” at the 14th Street Y in New York, where a mix of visual artists, writers, dancers, musicians and actors are brought together to study classic Jewish texts in a non-religious, open setting.  

Kupferminc will share her recent works including a video presented in Venice during the commemoration of the 500 years of the Venetian Ghetto and images for her site-specific installation in the third Jerusalem Biennale in Israel. The installation, “Traduttore-Traditore” represents a destroyed Tower of Babel.

Shvartzman, a writer, poet and psychoanalyst by profession, will discuss the Tower of Babel, as it appears in the Bible, in conjunction with “The Library of Babel,” by Jorge Luis Borges.

Sosnowski, professor of Latin American Literature and Culture at the University of Maryland at College Park, will moderate the panel.  He has written many books including “Borges and the Kabbalah: Paths to the Word” (images by Kupferminc and text by Sosnowski).

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