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What is this image? How does this image make you feel?

This is the artwork for “808s n trance gates / go somewhere” by hoyah. It is an anti-jewish image published in 1900 in Austria. For me, as an Observant Jew living in these upside down times, this image encapsulates the distortion and dehumanisation that happens to ALL PEOPLE as a result of fear and lack of understanding.

I wanted to use this image as the artwork as it asks the question – is it possible for a Jewish person to re-appropriate hate in a society where hate doesn’t want to be talked about? Especially here in Germany, the weaponisation of anti-semitism is used by non-jewish German politicians to limit the freedom of expression. Is being skeptical of the “Jewish State” anti-semitic? Is being supportive of Palestinians right to exist anti-semitic?

I have not been able to publish this image as the artwork. Ironically, these limitations to expression are what the image intended to highlight. These limitations have prevented the image from being published in the first place. So you get a QR code instead – a representative for the separation of this conversation, a placeholder for your imagination.

Questions are the way we move forward. So please ask yourself –