Deborah Wasserman, Still Water Runs Deep, 2020, acrylic and oil on panel, 11'' x 14".
Deborah Wasserman, Migrating Crops, 2020, ink, acrylic, oil, and torn clothes, 60 x 70 in.
Interior Design Magazine
"Rockwell Group Encourages a New York Tradition With Stoop NYC"
Fall 2022
Visionary Art Collective Magazine
"Deborah Wasserman: Finding Home"
Summer 2022
I Like Your Work
"Mythology of Motherhood: Deborah Wasserman"
Podcast Interview, May 27, 2022
Podcast interview with the artist, curator, and podcaster, Erika B. Hess
I'm thrilled to be featured in the last interview of the season with the I LIKE YOUR WORK podcast. In this podcast, I'm speaking to Erika B. Hess about my artistic path, inspirations for my work, and juggling motherhood and being an artist. You can listen to the podcast here. In addition, I LIKE YOUR WORK produced a stunning catalog of my work, which you can order here. I hope that you will listen to it, and feel free to review the podcast on Apple Podcasts.
Review of the exhibition Fragile Rainbow: Traversing Habitats by Art Spiel
"...once the artworks were selected, the idea to organize them in terms of habitat and interconnectedness seemed obvious. Even more wonderful was the way everything came together during installation, enabling the exhibition itself to exemplify interconnected habitats. Simulating a grove, one wall features paintings replete with trees, branches, flowers, fungi, roots, animals, and seeds, including pendulous cigar tree seeds (Catalpa speciosa)..."
Excerpt from the interview at Art Spiel with the exhibition curator, Sue Spaid
Beyond The Paint With Bernadine
Podcast Interview
Podcast script by Bernadine Franco, curator
"Visual artist Deborah Wasserman merges the female figure with the landscape in her paintings, collage and performative works. Her ongoing investigation the feminine experience and woman’s roles are informed by her own complex sense of ‘unbelonging’ growing up with several identities. This episode includes a conversation with the artist– an engaging deep dive into her works and personal histories."
Bernadine Franco, Sept 2021
Exhibition Statement by curator Lilian Frajili
To understand our place within nature as part of the whole is an eminently social and existential matter. The environmental crisis and the frequency of natural disasters we have experienced last decades, including the pandemic tragedy, which in essence was caused by an ecological imbalance, indicates the urgency for a different logic of conceiving, interacting, and projecting the natural world. The artistic community and its ability to expand the social mind have an essential role in creating a new value system concerning the environment, which breaks through modern anthropocentrism and the antagonism between nature and culture.
Coexisting, interacting, and exchanging energy with other organisms and natural phenomena is the basis for developing the artistic works presented in Embodied Forest. From the sensitive to the rational, these works contain an effervescence of processes, poetic materials, and techniques that reframe Forest in a set of plural languages. These cultural processes unfold nature by using knowledge and poetic freedom to help understand ecology in the Anthropocene and generate new sensibilities to an ethical relation to nature.
Lilian Fraiji, Juror, Fall 2021
Recent Interview at QNS.COM
By Tammy Scileppi
May 4, 2021
Queens’ pandemic journey, through the eyes of a Jackson Heights artist and parent
"...The mother of two teenage girls who is known for her vibrant artwork — her favorite mediums are ink, acrylic and oil on paper and canvas — as well as her offbeat, avant-garde performance art across Queens has remained extremely involved and active in her own beloved community and beyond, even helping folks during the height of the pandemic."
Art To Collect
Catalogue
The Catherine Fosnot Art Gallery and Center
Helaine Posner recommends Deborah Wasserman
"Deborah Wasserman’s intuitive, expressive paintings, drawings, and performances explore such subjects as the female body and subconscious, ecofeminism and environmental threat, and the heroine’s quest. Her identity as a woman, a mother, and a migrant is reflected in her multicultural, socially aware practice that values the natural world and our fellow human beings. Wasserman’s female Bather (2019), immersed in water and gazing skyward, suggests a longing to be one with nature as both sensory experience and spiritual journey. In a recent series of drawings titled Amazon Dreaming (2019) and Amazon Dreaming 4, (2020), the rain forest paradoxically appears as a barren landscape, ravaged by flames and littered with debris, the result of human exploitation and indifference. These depictions of natural disaster as an apocalyptic nightmare eerily resonate with our current crises."
Recommended by Helaine Posner, chief curator emerita, Newberger Museum Of Art, Fall 2020
You are not wonderful just because you are a Mother
Online Exhibition and Catalog, Artist/Mother Podcast
Unwonderful Mother
"...Using various mediums, forms, and aesthetics, the artists in this exhibition are together with Ishiuchi Miyako in this ever unfinished conversation (about motherhood). It is a conversation that goes beyond the charged argument of children vs. no children and reveals many unique relationships to and representations of the (sometimes unwonderful) idea of the mother."
Excerpt from the curatorial statement by Qiana Mestrich
November 2020-February 2021
Contemporary Portraiture: Redefining The Figure
Online Exhibition and Essay, Visionary Art Collective
"...For this exhibition, I sought to include work that spanned media and approach while speaking to contemporary issues. From collaged pieces containing imagery from multiple people that remind us of fractured personalities in the time of social media to portraits of people in masks. Embroidered portraits link the feminine and political while exploring inclusivity and race. Some work depicts quiet moments among families at home while other work imagines the internal view of futuristic cyborgs. Portraiture is having a resurgence as it intimately comments on representation during a time of upheaval and change."
Excerpt from the curatorial essay, Erika B. Hess, Curator & Host of the “I Like Your Work” Podcast, Nov-Dec 2020
Artists On Coping
Interview with Artist Deborah Wasserman, ART SPIEL
"...I live in Queens, New York, two blocks from Elmhurst Hospital, “the epicenter of the epicenter” of the pandemic. My neighborhood is the most diverse zip code in the United States, if not the world. Here, where 800 languages are spoken, and every street feels like a different culture, we live in close proximity to one another, with several families often sharing an apartment. Many residents have low-paying jobs and have to work through the lockdown. Suddenly this lovely, bustling, colorful community–my home–is the perfect breeding ground for the virus, and it’s running amok..."
Excerpt from an interview with Catherine Kirkpatrick, May 2020
Plurabelle in Lilith Magazine
Plurabelle collage published in Lilith's Summer Issue, 2019
Addiction: Jewish Women Caught In The Crisis... "From the spiral ramps that frame New York’s Guggenheim Museum, thousands of small, white sheets of paper—each containing what looked like a prescription for OxyContin—came down like snow. In the lobby several people lay on the floor.. and chanted, "Sacklers lie, people die." The protesters had gathered earlier this year to call attention to the museum’s financial ties to the Sacklers, whose pharmaceutical company makes the powerful painkiller OxyContin."
Lilith Magazine, Independent, Jewish, and Frankly Feminist
Defining the role of Citizen Artist
CalArts Pool issue #4
In his 2017 inaugural address, incoming CalArts president Ravi S. Rajan called on CalArtians everywhere to cherish their role as “Citizen Artists” who, in the words of the Institute’s founding provost Herbert Blau, are in a unique position to help “put the whole cracked world back together.” Beginning with this issue, The Pool will bring you the stories of alumni who exemplify this vision of Citizen Artists— graduates who have found a unique way to, as Rajan put it, “steer us toward a better future.”
Queens Art Intervention discusses dwelling in exhibition
by Jennifer Khedaroo
..."If you head to the Queens Museum by January 19, you will be able to see an exhibition brought together by local creatives and the Queens Art Intervention"...Intervention Hospitality by Deborah Wasserman: Two students sitting and having tea while connecting with the use of a humble background. (Photo: Richard West/RPGA Studio), Forest Hills Times, 2018
Annual Queens Art Intervention takes borough by storm
by Tammy Scileppi
Deborah Wasserman, Jackson Heights: “Hospitality” at Roosevelt Avenue
" Deborah: “In my project, I wanted to bring ‘Hospitality’ back to the table, so to speak, calling into question the way we, as individuals, as a community, as a country, welcome others. How do we treat ‘The Stranger,’ ‘The Other’ amongst us?”
...While pondering the idea of bringing people together, “so they can interact with one another in a manner that does not involve commerce or financial exchange, I thought about the ancient tradition of hospitality dating back to the beginning of time,” said the artist.
“Hospitality was practiced as a golden rule; as a shield to protect strangers and travelers from hunger, thirst and potential enemies; a way to practice humility, gratitude, and generosity; to straighten relationships in divided communities.”
She said another aspect of her project is the “exploration of class, migration, and nomads. Having spent years in great financial uncertainty, I often contemplate the fate of those less fortunate than me. In a time where natural disaster and warfare produced more migrants and homeless people than I’m able to recall, it’s important for me to contextualize ‘Hospitality’ within the framework of grief and difficulty, so it doesn’t read as an empty slogan, but is rather grounded in today’s reality.”
Qns.com, 2017
Performance artist Deborah Wasserman brings environmental issues to light
by Tammy Scileppi
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"...Watching performance artist Deborah Wasserman in action, you’d swear she had multiple personalities. Last Saturday at Corona Plaza, she channeled her inner nature goddess and became green Mother Earth/Queen of Trash, a long cape of garbage trailing behind her, as curious passers-by watched and wondered..."
Time Ledger, September 2016
No More Sexual Exploitation says Jackson Heights Artist
."...A woman with a mask made of paper pieces, most depicting women’s body parts, was standing on Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights last September. Wearing a short, tight, shiny dress and a blond, tangled wig, she handed out colorful cards with feminine figures, text and a telephone number..."
Voices Of NY
Leah Oates interviewing artist Deborah Wasserman
..."I wanted to ‘Do it on my own’ so coming to the United States by myself to live and study was an additional challenging choice that resulted in years of financial struggle. Looking back, it’s apparent to me that I was moved by a strong urge to find out who I really was and pushed myself to the limit to obtain an answer... one can say that my personal journey was and is my art, even more so than any other object I produce at the studio..."
Solo exhibit at Roger Smith Art
Far Away, So close, a solo exhinit by Deborah Wasserman. Roger Smith Arts
Homeward Found at Haarrets Newspaper, Israel
Deborah Wasserman's solo show Homeward Found at Bineth Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel, Haaretz newspaper
Translation: "Bineth Gallery in Tel Aviv: Homeward Found, an show created by artist Deborah Wasserman Explores the notion of travel and related issues. The exhibit features paintings of various sizes and multiple subjects: Collages of airplanes safety instructions, words, street signs and imaginary landscapes."
Life Integrates Art, Urban Land Magazine
by Amadie Hart
My work Culture Mix, commissioned by Public Art For Public Schools, New York School Construction Authority is mention in an article about public art in. NYC. I'm delighted that my 400sf, public art comission for $125,000 at P.S. 69 in Bayridge is mention alongside artists such as Takashi Murakami, who beautify NYC.
My artwork published on the cover of Entre Linhas
I'm so pleased to have my painting, Trees Are Poems The Earth writes, on the cover of Entre Linhas Magazine, September 2003
Culture Mix in the book Public Art For Public Schools
by Michele Cohen
..."If you head to the Queens Museum by January 19, you will be able to see an exhibition brought together by local creatives and the Queens Art Intervention"...
Myself: A Survey of Contemporary Self-Portraiture
Full-color catalog and essays by Joy Garnett and Mira Schor.
Myself: A Survey of Contemporary Self-Portraiture
Sheppard Fine Arts Gallery at the University of Nevada, Reno
January 18 - February 18, 2011
Curated by Marjorie Vecchio
The exhibition and catalog is dedicated to the memory of amazing young artists Emma Bee Bernstein and Devin Hosselkus.
Exhibition catalogue essay: Myself: A Conversation about Self-Portraiture, Joy Garnett and Mira Schor.
Downtown Dialogues
Group show at Lower Manhattan Cultural Center
I'm delighted to show my ten-parts painting (In)Sight in this group show at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Full- color foldout available!
Timeless/ Timeliness
Full-color catalog, written by curator and art critic Dominique Nahas
"Deborah Wasserman’s video, performative photography, and painting alludes to the quest of self-realization. Her work has both mystical and comic elements of path-making and path-finding. Transience and flux, suggests Wasserman, are the permanent markers in one's life journey. Easy Directions, the title of her work in this exhibition suggests the not-so-easy finding of one’s way in the world. The artist’s vision is sensitive to the conditions of liminality, the in-betweenness of spaces, both spiritual and material."
Dominique Nahas, Art Critic, Curator
at the Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, Newark, NJ
Israel In Fine Arts, Sao Paulo, Brazil
In conjunction with my solo show, Distante Tao Perto at La Hebraica La Galleria, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2000
Attached an article about my exhibit
" Deborah herself describes her creation as being eclectic... “I gather and absorb the external impressions, but most of my work is focused on putting away my internal world, which is composed of endless narratives, dead ends, excerpts of memories, fantasies and emotions”... my paintings have been influenced by the projection of the temporal film of my (our) life. As a matter of fact, Deborah’s drawings demonstrate a profound connection with the environment as being the mixture of Islamism and Judaism which coexists to the full in Jaffa, where her studio is currently located."
Profession Of Fate
By Marcelo Rabinovitch, En Foco newspaper, Sao Paulo, Brazil
In conjunction with my solo show, Distante Tao Perto at La Hebraica La Galleria, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2000
Attached an article about my exhibit
..."Silence and Loneliness – Deborah’s painting is a sensitive connection of themes of faith and spirituality. Even by becoming more conceptual and political, silence and loneliness have remained as the focus of her creativity. She also works with the experience of being a woman, who is Jewish, feminist and feminine at the end of the century. “In order to impose myself into a male world in the Arts, I used the strategy of internationalizing my career”, she says.
Deborah’s paintings capture the aesthetics and richness of the Middle East and its surroundings with perceptive detail. Plans for the future: Build her career on solid ground and teach art, “A painter who seeks a more beautiful reality and who eliminates the superficial, consumerist world”, she finalizes...."
Folha De Sao Paulo
An article about my exhibit Dostante Tao Perto at La Hebraica La Galleria, Marcella Bergamo, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2000
ERRATA AND CONTRADICTION CATALOG
An Exhibition Of Artwork And Poetry Build From/Around Words And Letters, Harvard University.
Errata and Contradiction, a group show, Harvard University