Focus Gallery: Afruz Amighi: Sounding Shell

This presentation is a part of Artists Respond to Sacred Splendor: Jewish Ritual Art and Christian Treasures from St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague

In the sculptural installation Sounding Shell, Afruz Amighi assembles a cast of mythological characters drawn from religions and cultures around the world. The Mexica goddess Coyolxāuhqui is a key figure: decapitated by her brother, according to myth, her severed head became the moon. Amighi's sculptures draw on this story of destruction as a wellspring of transformation and possibility. Eyes, teeth, breasts, and claws—all carved in luminous alabaster—rest on the floor, as if the steel-framed sculptures that surround them were bodies in various states of disintegration. Reliquaries on view in the exhibition Sacred Splendor, on the museum's second floor, likewise hold sacred fragments, asserting that something broken can possess the same spiritual power as something whole. The title Sounding Shell refers to the low roar heard while holding a curved shell to one's ear, a blend of sounds from the environment and those of the body. The heartbeat heard throughout the space underscores this sense of interconnectedness, causing objects and bodies to vibrate in unison.

Afruz Amighi: Sounding Shell and Hannah Altman: Not a Circle but a Spiral are two focused installations located on Floor 3 within Identity, Culture, and Continuity: Stories from the Collection of the Jewish Museum.

Two additional contemporary works by Edmund de Waal are on view in Sacred Splendor: Jewish Ritual Art and Christian Treasures from St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague on Floor 2.