Edited by Ian Sternthal
2:21
‘Borrowed Syndrome’ presents a collection of miniature sculptures and paintings by Einat Leader, an Israeli Jewelry artist, and her South African born husband, the painter David Goss, which examines the shared consequences of blindness, madness, messianic tendencies, memory, and repression in Contemporary Israel and Apartheid South Africa. The term ”Syndrome”—borrowed from the famous Jerusalem Syndrome— explosive feelings of grandeur and hallucinatory messianism aroused by encountering Jerusalem; a pathology which results from an extreme myopic interpretation of reality in an attempt to experience a sense of total righteousness. The book identifies a common structure which connects contemporary Israeli realities with apartheid South Africa: The manner in which the multiple ‘layers’ of Jerusalem cover and block one another is analogous to the denial and silencing that prevailed during the apartheid regime in South Africa.
