ZOE BUCKMAN

This new body of work represents a deeply personal exploration of Jewish identity, memory, and collective resilience. Through photographs of family and community members in intimate, domestic spaces, often within their own homes, Buckman considers the fragility of sanctuary and belonging. These domestic images become sites of both comfort and vulnerability, reflecting a history in which the idea of “home” for the Jewish people has often been precarious, impermanent, and shadowed by displacement.

Using a process that combines ink and acrylic painting on vintage domestic textiles, which are subsequently hand-embroidered, Buckman’s work invokes a language of care, labor, and tradition. The tactile quality of the materials echoes generational rituals passed down through matrilineal lines, while the imagery and text delve into ongoing themes in her practice: generational trauma, sexual violence, and bodily autonomy.

In Who By Fire, Buckman adds a vital layer to these concerns by confronting denialism, particularly as it intersects with antisemitism, misogyny, and racism. In this moment of intensified fear and isolation within Jewish communities, her work serves as both a mirror and a balm, offering viewers an opportunity to reflect on inherited histories and the quiet, persistent strength that endures through them.

Zoë Buckman’s Who By Fire is a call toward introspection, tenderness, and radical presence. It is a reclamation of space — physical, cultural, and emotional — for voices too often dismissed or distorted. Through this series, Buckman invites us to sit with both grief and joy, memory and possibility, and to consider how identity is shaped not only by struggle, but by the fierce will to remain.