HEAVEN & EARTH (YIDDISH COSMOS): Yevgeniy Fiks

Multidisciplinary artist Yevgeniy Fiks presents Heaven and Earth (Yiddish Cosmos), an exhibition that unveils the surprising connections between Eastern European Jewish history, futuristic utopia, and the Soviet space program. Fiks weaves a narrative of Yiddish culture built upon concepts of bold imagination, universality, and scientific progress.

By blending historical facts with fiction, Yiddish Cosmos evokes the futuristic utopia of the 20th century and the tangible achievements of space science from an Eastern European Jewish perspective. For Yevgeniy Fiks, the very idea of the Cosmos within the Soviet context becomes the ultimate embodiment of "Homeland" for a diasporic people. While the 20th-century Eastern European Jewish narrative uniquely aspired to universalism and scientific advancement, it is the Cosmos as a "Homeland" that perfectly embraces these very ideals.

Through drawings, objects, and archival documents, Fiks uses this exhibition to explore the real and imaginary analogies between the "AO" language—invented for interplanetary communication—and the Yiddish language, while juxtaposing the imagery of the Soviet space program with that of the Soviet Jewish community and Yiddish culture.