Welcome

With the support of the Fulbright Arts grant to Germany, Rothbard has been in Berlin since September, 2024 working on a series of mixed media paintings exploring the contemporary Regeneration of the Jewish community.


The project began with a central concern: As Jews living in the diaspora continue to secularize amidst globalization, there is a crucial need for creativity to build new community structures that preserve and uplift Jewish culture.

Given that Berlin was once the center of Nazi Germany and is now home to a growing Jewish community, global Jewry has much to gain from the story of Berlin’s Jews and their innovative community-building tactics. Since her arrival in Berlin, she has been gathering reference imagery from the built environment, conducting archival research, and speaking with local community members to understand the ways in which Berlin’s Jewish community is establishing a presence for Jewish culture in German society that is consistent with or different from the legacies left by Germany’s pre-war Jews, as well as how individuals envision the future of German Jewish life. This visual, conceptual, and historical material is processed and synthesized into collaged paintings and handmade paper.


What the artist found in Berlin was a fractured history, differing from the American Jewish story she was accustomed to, one of cultural continuity. Berlin’s Jewish community today is composed overwhelmingly of immigrants (and their descendants) who came over from the former Soviet Union after its collapse. Israelis and immigrants from other countries have joined the community in recent years as well, building a demographic with little in common with Germany’s pre-war Jewish population. The question of defining Jewishness in the diaspora has always been complicated, and it is especially so in Germany. Given this pluralism and the difficulty of self-definition, Rothbard found irony and even humor in Germany’s attempts to define Jewishness.

These are some of the thoughts that led her to consider questions of identity, security, and prosperity in this body of work.


Hannah Eve Rothbard is a multimedia artist, curator, and writer from South Florida and based primarily in New York. She is currently a Fulbright scholar in Berlin, Germany for the 2024-2025 academic year working on a painting project exploring the contemporary regeneration of the German Jewish community. She holds a BFA in Studio Art from New York University with a minor in Urban Design and Architecture Studies. Rothbard has exhibited at venues including 80 Washington Square East Gallery (NY), High Line Nine Galleries (NY), the New York City Poetry Festival (NY), Soft Times Gallery (CA), the Jerusalem Biennale (IL), and she has held residency at the Materia Prima Foundation (Italy). 


Willkommen
Hannah Eve Rothbard, solo exhibition
May 27 - June 1, 2025
Halfsister (Torgauer Str 1)
Open hours Tues-Fri 15-18h, Sat-Sun 14-19h



Vernissage & Panel Discussion Tuesday May 27, 18:30-20:30h

“Jewish Art in Berlin: Contemplating the Past, Building the Future”

Featuring Hadas Reshef (Art Historian, PhD Candidate at Freie Universität) and Olaf
Kühnemann (Artist, Co-Founder of LABA Berlin/Mar’a’yeh)