| Hailed recently as “the best of Jewish Conceptual art” by media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, Melissa Shiff is a video, performance, and installation artist whose work explores the intersection of art, ritual, and activism. Shiff reinvents and reformats Jewish rituals and analyzes Jewish culture making links to contemporary social problems with the aim of bringing social justice back to Judaism. Her video sculpture Elijah Chair is in the permanent collection of the Jewish Museum and it was featured in a special exhibition in 2004. Her video installation Gender Cuts/The Jew Under the Knife (for which she received a Toronto Arts Council grant) explores the contentious issue of circumcision and it is featured in the exhibition held in conjunction with ReJewvenation, Command J: Jewish Laws, Digital Arts. |