Joyce Ellen Weinstein is an artist based in New York City whose art explores the notion of ownership. During a residency at Europas Parkas Open Air Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania ten years prior, Weinstein observed a group of local residents practicing a series of trust-bond exercises that first appeared as nothing more than physical recreation. The artist’s vast documentation of these encounters were transformed into paintings, sculptures, collage, prints and book art, revisiting the impacts of anti-Semitism, violence, a-historicism and the larger separation from lived, historical narrative.

Blind Leading the Blind 4 Rows (2014) reflects a crowd of individuals whose eyes are covered, but who appear to lean toward one another. The isolationism inherent within these trust-bonding exercises is highlighted in Denial (2014), where a group of participants blindly follow a dynamic that more than demonstrates a visible lack of reliability, while trying to counter the psychological nature of apathy. Blind Leading the Blind Yellow Cross (2014) compounds the paradox further as black-lined figures juxtapose one another but appear to engage in dialogue. The artist transforms these performed safety measures into a symbol titled Blind Leading the Blind Blue (2014), showing the single silhouette of a blindfolded participant whose individuality remains anonymous. Two different perspectives appear at the base of this piece in addition to five marks of blue contour – one being a miniature, cut-out photograph of a woman with blonde hair dressed in blue.

Joyce Ellen Weinstein received her MFA from The City College of New York and has exhibited frequently throughout Baltimore, Maryland; New York City; Richmond, Virginia; and Washington D.C. In 2011 the artist received a solo exhibition titled The Old Wooden Synagogues of Lithuania at the University of Minnesota. In 2012 she received a solo show titled Denial at the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance. In 2014, this exhibition toured to the Keystone Art and Cultural Center located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In 2013 Weinstein participated in two group shows sponsored by the Women’s Caucus for Art – Provocateur at the Riverside Library and Diaspora at New Century Artists in Chelsea. Joyce Weinstein’s art is featured in many private and public art collections such as the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania, the Florida Holocaust Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C. and the Hebrew Union College Institute of Religion Museum in New York, New York. From January 15th to March 28th 2014, the artist participated in Faith and Form that took place at the Anne Frank Center in New York.