The faces of Tikkun Olam

(repairing the world)

The Faces of Tikkun Olam celebrates a few of my ancestors, friends and associates, who have contributed to making the world a better place for everyone.

2023: Amanta Scott — solo exhibition in Toronto

March 1 - 29 2023, Miles Nadal Gallery at the J exhibited The Faces of Tikkun Olam — encaustic paintings and prints celebrating contemporary and historical individuals working to make the world a better place.

This exhibition also included select works from Eyeing Medusa and Facing Lucretia.

Select works from Eyeing Medusa

aluminium prints included in Miles Nadal Gallery exhibition
— The Faces of Tikkun Olam— March 1 - 30, 2023

Related works from Facing Lucretia

encaustic paintings included in Miles Nadal Gallery exhibition
— The Faces of Tikkun Olam— March 1 - 30, 2023

The Faces of Tikkun Olam exhibition at Miles Nadal Gallery at the J, March 1 - 29, 2023, Toronto, Ontario

why?

“All my life people have said to me: “You’re different.” Alienated, I carry on regardless.

Recently I was asked why I engage with social issues as an artist.

Since unity in diversity, and intercultural understanding, have always been core values in my work, I decided to find out why.

This project reflects my research into my ancestral roots and the discovery of an extraordinary family tree with over ten generations of human rights activists, rabbis, philosophers, entrepreneurs, writers, artists and refugees — engaging with questions about identity, sexuality, spirituality and social change — and striving to improve and repair the world.

When I learned about the concept of Tikkun Olam — “repairing the world”— I realized that this is what what my ancestors and their circle of friends had been striving for throughout the generations. Strangely enough this too has been my lifelong aim, although I had never before heard the idiom.

Recognizing that this is also what binds us, I had my answer.

This is why I engage with social issues as an artist.”
— Amanta Scott

what?

Future iterations of Tikkun Olam may encompass encaustic paintings, storytelling, video and workshops by Amanta Scott; coupled with music, writings and artworks of family members and their contemporaries— created by artists such as Renoir, Klimt, Laszlo, Beckmann, and others— linking to and/or presented in related historical buildings and museums worldwide.

 
“I started with the following questions: Since being expelled from Spain in 1492— what issues have my people and their contemporaries been wrestling with over the years? Who were these people who questioned and sought solutions? What were their questions? What motivated them? What happened to them? Where did they go and why? What echoes of their questions and works still resonate today? Why do they matter? How are they relevant now?

I realized that every single one of them was striving to improve the world and leave it a better place than they had found it.

Tikkun Olam, this sense of being called to make the world a better place, resonated strongly within me. I realized that I had found the answer to my questions. ”
— Amanta Scott

who has been painted already?

Who intrigues me?

and the list grows . . .

where did they live?

time line sketches

Spain:

Sephardic

  • 1492 Edict of Expulsion . . . Allatini family expelled from Spain

Italy:

Sephardic

  • Dr. Vitale Allatini & Pope Julius III (1487-1555)

  • Lazaro Allatini (1776 Italy –1834 Greece) . . . Moise Allatini (1809 Italy–1882 Greece)

  • Count Abraham Camondo (1781 Istanbul - 1873 Paris)

Prague:

Ashkenazi

  • Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller (1579 – 1654). . .

  • Rabbi Aryeh Leib Heller (1745 - 1813)

  • Solomon Judah Loeb Rapoport . . . (1790-1867) . . . great grand father of Bronislawa Rapoport von Porada

Greece:

Sephardic

  • Moise Allatini (1809 Italy–1882 Greece). . . Alliance Israelite Universelle . . . The Haksalah . . . Clara de Hirsch . . . Rothschild family

  • Sa’adi Besalel a-Levi (1820-1903). . . cantor

  • Dino Fernandez . . . Villa Bianca dedicated to wife. . . daughter Aline Fernandez Diaz elopes with Spyros Alibertis…. WWII . . . murdered

Vienna:

The Sephardic line converges with the Ashkenazi line with the birth of Rose Laure Allatini who will be grandmother to Amanta Scott

  • Arnold Edlen Rapoport von Porada (1840-1907) . . . son Alfred . . .daughter Bronislawa Rapoport von Porada who marries Roberto Allatini, daughter Rose Laure Allatini (1891-1980)

  • Alfred Edlen Rapoport von Porada marries and later divorces Käthe Anne Rapport von Porada. Alfred raises daughters Hilde and Edith Porada; Käthe and Hilde are painted by Max Beckman

  • Viennese Society . . . 1900s: Adele Bloch Bauer (1881-1925) is painted by Gustav Klimt. Social circle includes Klimt, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss
    Felicia von Kuh is painted by Philip Alexius de Laszlo
    Alfred, Laurę and Bronislawa Rapoport von Porada painted by Zygmunt Ajdukiewicz

  • WWII . . . family given 30 minutes to leave country . . . family home converted to Hitler’s headquarters

France:

Sephardic

  • Nissim de Camondo (1830 - 1889) marries Elise Fernandez, daughter of Rosa Allatini (sister of Moise Allatini) and Moise Fernandez . . . Irene de Cahen . . . Renoir . . .Comte Moise de Camondo . . . (son) Nissim killed . . . (daughter) Beatrice Camondo & kids . . . murdered

  • Theodore Reinach . . . Léon Reinach & Beatrice de Camondo . . . murdered

  • Marcel Dassault (1892-1986) nephew of Moise Allatini . . . WWII . . . Buchenwald . . . Dassault Aviation . . .

  • Darius Milhaud (1882-1974) nephew of Moise Allatini . . . teacher of Philip Glass & Steve Reich

  • Eric Allatini (grand nephew of Moise Allatini). . . Hélène Hirsch Kahn . . . murdered

  • Gerda Wegener . . . Lili Elbe . . . (1886 – 1940) . . . Oskar Kokoshka . . . sex & death

  • Vera Atkins . . . greatest spy of WWII

  • Cecile Kahn Brunschvicg (1877-1946) French feminist politician. From 1920 onwards regarded as the grande dame of the feminist movement)

Germany

  • Grete Lebach (1896 -1990) . . . Albert Einstein (1879-1955) close friends in Berlin

England:

  • Allatini family headquarters 1895

  • Rose Laure Allatini writes about family members escaping wars as refugees, from living in luxury to eating out of sardine cans; 1918 novel Despised and Rejected banned for sedition

  • Rose Laure Allatini marries composer Cyril Scott (1879-1970). . . children: Desmond Scott & Vivian Scott

  • Desmond Scott returns from WWII, emigrates to Canada, marries Corinne Langston

  • Rose Allatini, Bronislawa Rapoport von Porada (Allatini), Desmond Scott & Corinne Langston have tea

  • lifelong friendship between Melanie Mills & Rose Allatini

ireland

  • 1876 - Maud Kathleen Gleason is born Dublin, Ireland, emigrates to Canada as a result of the potato famine

USA:

  • WWII -Edith Porada emigrates to USA, given 30 minutes notice to leave Vienna during the war

Canada:

  • Kathleen Maud Gleason emigrates to Canada, marries Johannes Heinr Theodor Fischer, a ship’s cook and deserter from the German Navy; vague mention is made of distant Spanish/Romanian Gypsy heritage

  • 1907 - Cecelia Fisher is born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, to Maud and Theo

  • 1914 - Mrs. Maud Fisher (need Gleason) is found dead in a doorway; her 10 children dispersed by the Catholic Church. Cecelia is sent to an orphanage and then a foster home.

  • Cecelia marries Archie Langston, son of Sarah Sherbikoff Davis (1882-1932) and Archibold WJ Langston. Sarah Sherbikoff Davis is Jewish (Ashkenazi) but little else is known.

  • 1929 - Corinne Langston is born to Cecelia Fisher and Archie Langston

  • 1932 - Sarah (Sherbikoff) Langston (Archie’s mother) dies

  • Cecelia is notably kind to the poor and homeless and Indigenous people

  • 1945 - Cecelia Fisher dies

  • 1960 - Corinne Langston marries Desmond Scott

  • 1960-2000

    • Scott family in Canada has little to no contact with any other family members

    • Amanta Scott plays Cyril Scott’s music, reads Scott’s, Rose’s and Melanie Mills’ books

    • Carol Burnett visits Desmond, Corinne & Amanta Scott, seeking spiritual answers to existential questions

    • Desmond Scott & Corinne Langston . . . discover Cyril Scott via letter in estate . . . work begins on Cyril Scott Estate, music and literature

  • 2015 - Corinne Langston learns true story of her grandmother Kathleen Maud Gleason, Cecelia Fisher’s mother

  • 2019 - Amanta Scott begins Eyeing Medusa, paints Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Katie Bouman, Judi Feld Carr, Rosalie Abella, Maayan Ziv, etc

  • Amanta discovers Moise Allatini while researching Thessaloniki for a painting of Katerina Sakellaropoulou

Interesting historic moments in canada

1961- Jewish Civil rights lawyers & activists Kalmen Kaplansky, Alan Borovoy, Ben Kayfetz, Sidney Midanik, collaborate with Black leaders Bromley Armstrong and Dan Hill to establish Ontario Human Rights Commission

2004 - Rosalie Abella appointed to Supreme Court of Canada

References & links