Skirball Cultural Center

TORN Project presents thirty-six collages created by contemporary artist Susan Lerner in the wake of Hamas’s deadly terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023. Lerner began the series in March 2024 when she discovered torn-down pieces of “Kidnapped from Israel” hostage posters in her New York City neighborhood. These posters, designed by two Israeli artists living in the US, were intended to raise awareness of the men, women, and children held captive in Gaza since the attacks.  

Lerner produced 251 collages from scraps of the ruined posters, one in honor of each hostage. The artist describes every collage in the series as a “unique piece, a patchwork of shards that remind us of how Jewish suffering was minimized or denied.… TORN Project is a metaphor of the resilience of Jews to recreate ourselves, to put the pieces of our people back together time and time again in the face of antisemitism and adversity.” 

The Skirball recently acquired Lerner’s thirty-six collages for the museum’s collection.

On view for a limited time in the Kaleidoscope Gallery.
 

Curatorial Acknowledgments

This exhibition is organized by the Skirball Cultural Center, and curated by Alissa Schapiro, PhD, Curator and Collections Specialist.   

Susan Lerner is a New York City-based, hand-cut collage artist. In her prior profession as a Certified Flavor Chemist, Lerner “collaged” chemicals into unique flavors. Now, as a full-time artist, she creates compositions that provide social commentary on contemporary life using images from old books and magazines. Her collages have been featured in solo exhibitions in New York and Connecticut, in group shows in the US, Germany, Norway, and France, and in periodicals including the 2023 book Collage Care: The Method. Lerner also co-founded the New York Collage Ensemble.