Hope: Artwork by Aithan Shapira

Hope: Artwork by Aithan Shapira will be on display at The Florida Holocaust Museum from May 1 – July 12, 2015. Join us for the opening reception on Saturday, May 9 at 7 p.m. Meet the artist and enjoy light refreshments. The opening reception is free to FHM members, and $9 general admission. RSVPs required by calling (727) 820-0100 ext. 271.

“Hope is integral—some is collected, some is inherited. I want, I think we all want, for it to be a simple, beautifully elegant thing, but the more you draw from it, it begins to look more like despair, or re‐purposed despair. There is a similar reasoning behind starting a new work of art.” —Shapira

Hope “casts” light on the gravity of Israeli‐American artist Aithan Shapira’s recent work. Shapira asks what hope looks like today, and has created a universal symbol from an abandoned life preserver. His subject matter spans more than a decade across three continents tackling conflicting fields of view, whether simultaneously addressing two sides of a wall or matters of migration or of false hope. Over the years, the abandoned life preserver has evolved in his work: one cut from discarded cardboard, another painted in a fox trap, and in this recent series, he cast hundreds in concrete for those who it is too late to save.

For Shapira, hope anchors 2015 political, economic, and environmental campaigns; it is the driving force for personal ambitions under the stresses of the current global climate; hope is simultaneously the aspiration to end wars and the catalyst to begin them—a measure of human life. “It’s the poetry of human potential,” he remarks about the exhibit. Hope is a vision for art and our generation’s ability to make societal and cultural change. “My work is not about me, it is a mirror of us, and it does not show what we are but reflects what we can become.”

The exhibition is on loan from the artist.