Emergences, 2009-2013, Hudson River, Denning's Point State Park, Beacon, NY (high tide)
I had the pleasure of working with Raquel Rabinovich on many exhibitions and projects. I am still awed by Raquel Rabinovich: Anthology of the Riverbeds, the exhibition at the Alon Foundation in Buenos Aires in 2009. It was especially memorable because the artist’s work was first seen in her home country. We selected forty drawings from more than two hundred and thirty in the River Library series, and the video Emergences. The drawings were made in a solution of mud- and-water, adhesive, charcoal, and manganese powder. The mud with sediments came from rivers including the Ganges, the Hudson, the Ayeyarwady, the Urubamba, and the Rio de la Plata. I was always beguiled by her process of dipping the hand-made paper countless times until the surface became present and visible. Her stone sculptures also reveal her metaphysical search for the invisible or unknown aspects of the mind and spirit.
Emergences presents eight stone sculptures at the edge of the Hudson River “where there is no fixed separation between the earth and water.” The tides reveal and conceal the installations every six hours; the currents slowly unsettle their core, eventually claiming them. The artist perceived the river as a metaphor for life and death.
I continue admiring Raquel’s extraordinary ability to invest the Buddhist tenets of impermanence in these works: both marked by alternating visibility (revealing) and invisibility (covering). Her creative act captured the darkness and the light; the beginning and the end.
— Julia Herzberg
