Afterimage
2022-2024
Above:
The indigenous Bolero at Ma’agan Michael,
Handmade paper
2024
Images by Emily Martinez
Writing contributions by: Jori Cheville, Bryan LeBeau, Emily Martinez and Hall Rockefeller
Rae Stern's latest body of work, "Afterimage", was created during her 2022-2025 tenure as the Inaugural Visiting Artist at Englewood Arts in Independence, MO. Invited by the art center to engage with the town's resources, Stern drew inspiration from her research of documents archived at the nearby Harry S. Truman Presidential Library.
Stern’s exploration of the Truman era during 2022-2023 - the year marking the 75th anniversary of the American recognition of the state of Israel - was an opportunity for her to re-examine the complexities of nationhood, statecraft, and diplomacy through contemporary context. Her primary archival sources included a photo album presented in 1949 to diplomat Charles F. Knox, the first Counselor of the U.S. Mission, by his "friends in Israel", along with Knox’s own letters to his sister, Jessie, and other confidants. The album, a diplomatic missive in images, was meant to be taken home by Knox to America, while the letters offered a candid glimpse into his personal thoughts. Together, they represent the contrast between political veneer and the realities of Israel’s early days
—or do they?
Stern uses art as an interpretive tool to suggest the imperfections of any perspective, by virtue of its inherent incompleteness. Even Knox’s candid words to his sister—in which he expresses fear of air raids and laments his romantic prospects as a diplomat—are shaped by the time and place in which they were written.
Stern’s hand, blocking light as it appears behind a detail of The indigenous Bolero at Ma’agan Michael., 2024
To prepare for this project, Stern returned to her native Israel to revisit the landscapes depicted in the album’s photographs or mentioned in the letters. Along this exploratory journey Stern documented her observations via photography and video. She then reconstructed select scenes by juxtaposing materials typically found in historical archives—such as paper, photographic prints, video, and glass—to explore the complex and often contradictory narratives surrounding significant historical events. Each medium brings a distinct value to the project—one diffuse and the other direct—prompting her audience to reconsider how we understand ourselves in the world, as individuals, as citizens, and as human beings.
Detail from Wind held in two palms, 2023, Handmade paper, video.
The word afterimage refers to the optical phenomenon in which an image continues to appear in one’s vision after the eyes have been shut. In Stern’s work, it becomes a metaphor for the lingering imprint of place—the sensory echo of home, layered with complexity, dissonance, and quiet persistence.
Stern revisited these sites not as an outsider, but as someone shaped by belonging, absence, and change. By shifting her gaze and selecting specific vantage points, she tells a nuanced story of the landscape, often overlooked by outsiders. In Afterimage, she does not attempt to present a singular narrative of the land. Instead, she invites reflection on how histories are constructed, and how meaning persists or dissolves across time and space.
Through "Afterimage," Stern continues her creative exploration of themes connecting history, memory, and translucency, while shifting her focus from porcelain to paper as a medium. To do so, she set up a temporary studio at Englewood Arts and developed a unique technique to create large-scale, highly detailed, ghost-like images in her handmade paper. By manipulating the thickness of the pulp, light passes through the thinner sections, revealing images that can only be seen when backlit.
With this process Stern reveals again the invisible gaps in our collective recollection and sheds light on the evanescent fragments from which our histories are composed.
Select Works
The Indigenous Bolero at Ma’agan Michael
2022–2024
Handmade paper diptych, cotton thread
106.25 x 62 in
Acknowledgments: Teresa Dorsch, Emily Martinez
In memory of Gail Rubin 1938-1978
Installation view, The Indigenous Bolero at Ma’agan Michael, 2022-2024,
The Indigenous Bolero at Ma’agan Michael is a large diptych created in handmade paper that captures a deceptively serene landscape—still water, native vegetation, palm trees, and the faint shimmer of lines hung above a fishpond. Yet beneath the surface lies a dynamic narrative shaped by history, ecology, and migration. Subtle signs of human presence—a building, a watchful cat, a perched bird—infuse the scene with quiet tension, as the balance between hunter and hunted shifts continuously.
Created after a visit to the coastal Israeli kibbutz Ma’agan Michael, the work considers layered transformations in land use and cultural identity. From Roman aquaculture and Ottoman-era agriculture to modern industry and environmental stewardship, the site reflects centuries of adaptation and change. Rather than affirming fixed ideas of indigeneity, the piece evokes a cyclical rhythm of return and regeneration. Migratory birds, drifting seeds, and shifting borders all play roles in an ongoing choreography that defies binary narratives.
For Stern, the work becomes a meditation on cohabitation and legacy. It is also a nod to Gail Rubin, a nature photographer and environmentalist who was murdered by terrorists near this shoreline in 1978. Her life and death are part of the complex story inscribed in the landscape—another layer in its evolving memory. Like Ravel’s Boléro, the piece builds through quiet repetition, asking not for resolution, but care and attention.
Afterimage exhibition view at Englewood Arts, MO
From left:
The indigenous Bolero at Ma’agan Michael, 2022-2024
I think I remember more than I think, 2025
Swifter than Eagles, 2022-2023
Swifter than Eagles
2022–2023
Handmade paper, cotton thread, single-channel silent video projection, presented in an infinite loop
72.5 x 41.75 inches
Acknowledgments: Ani Kinney, Emily Martinez, Ben Stern
Installation view for Swifter than Eagles, 2022-2023.
Just outside the old city of Acre, a lone white horse, tethered, paces back and forth atop a manmade hill, believed to have been built by Napoleon’s forces during the 1799 siege of the city. The horse, moving between light and shadow, evoked both presence and prophecy. Its pacing recalled sacred symbolism from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, where white horses appear as messengers of judgment, revelation, or redemption.
The scene’s quiet tension deepens upon learning that this very hill had once overlooked a rare moment of interfaith cooperation: during Napoleon’s siege, the city’s Jewish community, led by the influential advisor Haim Farhi, played a vital role in defending Acre alongside its Muslim residents led by the ruler, Ahmad Pasha al-Jezzar. Despite his loyalty and effectiveness, Farhi was later mutilated and ultimately executed—his story a haunting reminder of how political allegiance and religious identity can collide.
Filmed in 2022, the work became a meditation on history’s layers and the precarity of the present. The camera, like history, captures but also obscures. Trees and terrain bear the traces of colonial, ecological, and military interventions. Though silent, the video pulses with tension. The horse, confined yet alert, mirrors the weight of inherited memory. Its meaning shifts—between warning and witness, stillness and motion—echoing Stern’s sense of looming crisis and the spiritual entanglements embedded in the land.
Still from Swifter than Eagles, 2022-2023.
Only the Sands Own Caesarea
2022–2023
Handmade paper, cotton thread
70.25 x 46.75 inches
Acknowledgments: Noam Hermon
Only the Sands Own Caesarea, 2022-2023
The scene depicts a section of Caesarea’s Roman aqueduct, partially buried beneath a sand dune. Originally built by Herod the Great and later expanded under Hadrian, the aqueduct once served the ancient port city of Caesarea—a vital hub in the Roman Empire. Over the centuries, the city passed through the hands of Byzantines, Muslim caliphates, Crusaders, and Ottomans, each leaving their mark on the landscape.
The sand now encroaching upon the aqueduct symbolizes both erosion and endurance. Structures like this, once emblems of imperial ambition, stand today as quiet reminders of the cycles of rise and fall that shape history.
For Stern, who now lives primarily overseas, the image also serves as a personal meditation on memory and identity. The place she comes from remains deeply embedded in her inner landscape, even as its contours blur. Like the aqueduct, what feels permanent is always shifting—preserved in part, but never whole.
Wind Held in Two Palms
2022–2023
Handmade paper, cotton thread, single-channel video projection (infinite loop)
72.5 x 41.75 inches
Video Editor: Johanna Brooks
Acknowledgments: Hannah Finnan, Efrat Manaster, Miriam Manaster
installation view for Wind Held in Two Palms, 2022-2023
Filmed near the Dung Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City, Wind Held in Two Palms captures a quiet moment on a Friday afternoon: wind rustles through palm trees, shadows flicker across ancient stone, and the layered rhythms of the city unfold. In both Hebrew and Arabic, the word for wind — רוח — ruaḥ, rūḥ—also means spirit, evoking an unseen force that stirs both sky and soul.
The work connects two forms: a silent video and a handmade paper image. One impermanent; the other is of what holds still. But both observe the same location— where two palm trees sway side by side as worshippers pass the gate towards their places of worship. The focus is not on identity, but on presence. By resisting simplified contrasts between peoples, politics, or beliefs, the piece offers a quiet defiance of binary narratives. What we see, and what we sense, do not always align. It is a meditation on presence and perception, reminding us that understanding often lives not in clarity, but in nuance.
Paper only view for Wind Held in Two Palms, 2022-2023
Exuberant Confusion
2022–2023
Handmade paper, cotton thread, single-channel silent video projection (infinite loop)
72.5 x 42.5 inches
Video Editor: Johanna Brooks
Acknowledgments: Yaniv Stern, Hannah Finnan
Paper only view, Exuberant Confusion, 2022-2023
Exuberant Confusion captures a bustling Tel Aviv street corner, where layers of history converge in a single glance. The work reflects on the city's origins as a planned Hebrew-speaking city and traces its evolution through waves of migration, political upheaval, and urban expansion. Referencing 1948 letters by American diplomat Charlie Knox, the artist draws parallels between that formative moment and the city’s present-day vibrancy—marked by tech, innovation, multiculturalism, and social tension.
Filmed in 2022, the video juxtaposes the kinetic choreography of everyday life with ghostlike figures that fade in and out, questioning what it means to move through, share, or belong to a space—especially in moments of volatility. In 2023, Tel Aviv was gripped by protests; by 2024, missile and drone attacks turned abstract anxiety into immediate threat. The proximity of history and danger became personal. Like the city itself, the piece holds exuberance and confusion in a fragile balance— always in motion, perpetually on edge.
Installation view, Exuberant Confusion, 2022-2023
Between the River and the Cliff
2022–2024
Handmade paper, cotton thread
70.25 x 46.75 inches
Acknowledgments: Teresa Dorsch, Yael L.M., Emily Martinez,
Between the River and the Cliff, 2022-2024
The portrait captures Yael L.M.. seated quietly at the edge of Tel Aviv’s HaTsuk (the cliff) Beach, her gaze fixed on the horizon, her posture inward. A holocaust survivor’s granddaughter and a fierce advocate for Israel’s democratic future, Yael’s presence in the image carries the emotional weight of personal and national memory. Her grandmother, rescued from Auschwitz as a child, later built a life in Israel - her only refuge. Yael was raised with that legacy, of survival and reconstruction, yet now contends with rising fears of what the future holds for her own children - will a democratic and moral Israel prevail?
Created in handmade paper, the piece elicits a false stillness. It is not a portrait of calm but of a sense of helplessness, with subtle signs of instability—the chair sinking in the sand, a red lifeguard flag and heavy clouds gathering. The work touches on generational responsibility and the vulnerability of those who live between past traumas and future uncertainties. Its title references a politicized phrase, but reclaims it through the lens of lived experience: not as ideology, but as a portrait of those who live the reality rather than chant about it from afar.
Hanita at Dusk
2022
Archival Inkjet Print
Acknowledgments: Elia Stern
Hanita at Dusk, 2022
Hanita at Dusk presents a photographic collage reflecting on past and present life along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. The work responds to a 1940s image from an album once gifted to U.S. diplomat Charlie Knox, showing the kibbutz of Hanita—founded in 1938 during the Tower and Stockade campaign—as a peaceful, sunlit community overlooking the Mediterranean. This seemingly tranquil image belies the complex history of strategic land acquisition, border formation, and early Zionist defense efforts.
Revisiting the site in 2022, the artist found the approximate vantage point now located within a military zone. Though the kibbutz had flourished over the decades, the border remained volatile. Following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack in the south, Hezbollah launched assaults in the north, forcing Hanita’s evacuation. Over 60,000 residents from nearby communities were displaced as well.
Placed side by side, the photographs form a panoramic view—yet the frames do not align. The visible seam between them becomes a quiet metaphor for a border that remains unstable, both geographically and historically.
Landmines in Thorn Fields
2022
3-channel HD video, color
Acknowledgments: Gil & Leah Elisha, Elia & Ben Stern
Landmines in Thorn Fields is a three-channel video installation filmed in the Golan Heights in late 2022. Each screen presents a different stretch of minefield, nestled within fields of dry weeds and thistle. At first glance, the landscape appears tranquil—but posted warning signs betray its latent volatility.
The Golan Heights were captured by Israel from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War, following years of Syrian artillery fire directed at Israeli civilian communities in the Hula Valley. The territory remains marked by that conflict: minefields laid by both Syrian and Israeli forces continue to pose risks to wildlife, farmland, and nearby residents. In the dry season, a single detonation can spark wildfires that race through the underbrush.
The work lingers between observation and metaphor, revealing how the smallest spark—political or literal—can ignite something far larger. The artist was joined by extended family during the shoot; the bonds between them mirrored the terrain—strong, yet charged with undercurrents.
Filmed less than a year before the October 7th attacks, which sparked a multi-front regional war, the piece has taken on a prophetic quality. It is a meditation on how dormant conflicts smolder quietly, waiting to catch fire.
If You Cage Them Will They Not Strike Back?
2022
Archival inkjet prints
Acknowledgments: Ami Cohen, Ben Stern
If You Cage Them, Will They Not Fight? is a photographic juxtaposition that explores co-entrapment and survival within the contested claims to land—both human and non-human. One image was taken in Shoresh, a hillside community built near the remains of the Palestinian village of Saris. On her way to Jerusalem, Stern visited a relative whose home in Shoresh overlooks the 1948 supply route to the besieged Jerusalem. His confrontation with a trapped porcupine—caught in a cage meant to protect fruit trees—becomes a metaphor for instinctive resistance and the blurred boundaries between protection and harm, control and desperation.
The second photograph, taken in Wadi Salib, Haifa, captures the present-day remnants of a once-mixed neighborhood scarred by displacement during the 1948 war—its ruins still standing like an open wound. Together, the works reflect on mutual acts of physical and historical confinement, asking what happens when the cage is not only material, but inherited. Referencing Shylock’s monologue in The Merchant of Venice, the title invites reflection rather than resolution: a call to see the other not as abstraction, but as capable of pain, resistance, and agency.
על גגותיך תל אביב, הפקדתי דוודים
Upon Your Rooftops, Tel Aviv, I Have Set Water Heaters
2022
Archival inkjet prints
Acknowledgments: Efrat Manaster, Miriam Manaster, Yaniv Stern
This photographic pairing—one taken in Jerusalem, the other in Tel Aviv—responds to historical images from a 1948 album gifted to U.S. diplomat Charlie Knox. In Jerusalem, the artist reverses the vantage point of a photograph from the album. Rather than depicting the familiar touristic view from the Mount of Olives, she looks back toward the ancient Jewish cemetery from which the image was originally captured. The photograph shows a terrain layered with burial, belief, and contested access—an enduring symbol of collective memory, commitment, and rupture.
The second photograph responds to an image of Tel Aviv from the same album, this time shifting from a low to a high vantage point to capture the city’s white, flat rooftops dotted with solar water heaters—subtle yet prevalent markers of adaptation shaped by necessity, climate, and everyday life.
Together, these photographs explore how different cities encode collective experience into their built environments. In Jerusalem, the visible strata of history reach deep into the past; in Tel Aviv, rooftop objects sustain the present. One landscape is defined by commemoration, the other by functionality—yet both reveal how people gather, endure, and leave traces in the places they inhabit.
The Hostage Square
2024–2025
Handmade paper, cotton thread, single-channel silent video projection presented in infinite loop
70.25 x 46.75 in
Video Editor: Johanna Brooks
Studio view, Hostage Square, 2024-2025
The Hostage Square (Kikar Ha’chatufim) was filmed in early 2024 at a public plaza outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art that transformed into a space of protest and remembrance of the hostages taken during the October 7th attacks. In the assault, over 240 people—men, women, children, elderly of 25 nationalities —were abducted by the terrorist organization Hamas and taken into Gaza.
The plaza, lined with yellow chairs and posters bearing the hostages’ faces, became the heart of a civilian movement demanding their return. The camera captures the quiet choreography of grief and solidarity: passersby, vigils, birds, the ever-present Ministry of Defense looming in the background.
The work holds the tension between power and vulnerability—between the urgency to stop the unbearable cost of waiting for a deal and the inevitable nature of life moving forward. As in other works, Stern isolates the impermanent from the permanent, yet in this work - not to preserve the moment, but in hopes to end it. It is a plea for undoing, for resolution, for the nightmare to pass and the square to return to art rather than battle.
Detail from Installation view,
Hostage Square, 2024-2025
Process view of paper, Hostage Square, 2024-2025
I Think I Remember More Than I Think
2025
Glass, rocks collected by artist’s mother from the Carmel coastline.
Created with glassblower Swede (Phillip Hickok) and assisted by Payton Koranek and Cole Kennedy at the glass hot-shop at Englewood Arts, Independence, MO.
Acknowledgments: Elia Stern
Installation view, I Think I Remember More Than I Think, 2025
Stern’s work on Afterimage began with hesitation. Invited to create an exhibition around a volatile subject, the artist found herself uncovering fragments of personal and collective history that had been quietly instilled in her over time. Her sense of homeland is more intimate than ideological—shaped by years spent in place, in language, and in the presence of elders.
For those who have lived outside their homeland, the gap between what is known and felt, and what can be explained to others- is familiar. Stern often struggles with this gap. In her work, an inherited past—marked by war and complexity—is neither denied nor simplified, but transformed into fragile forms of meaning and memory.
Here, the pain of coming from a layered heritage—one shaped by conflict, past, present, and likely future—is carried into form. The stones her mother once gave her now have a life of their own, as art.
Above: Detail of scene from The Day Lasts More Than a Thousand Sunsets, 2022-2025
Acknowledgments
With heartfelt appreciation, the artist extends special thanks to those whose generosity, encouragement, and belief in this project were vital to its completion: Michael Abrams, Michael Baxley, Teresa Dorsch, Joan and Steve Israelite, Mary Kemper-Wolf, Jason and Leah Maki, Yaniv Stern, Patricia Uhlmann, and Laura and Alan Voss.
The artist is also deeply grateful to the production team, who supported the production process with dedication and skill: Johanna Brooks, Hannah Finnan, Swede (Phillip Hickok), Cole Kennedy, Ani Kinney, Payton Koranek, Kevin Miller, Emily Martinez, and Brandon Schnur.
Sincere thanks go to the leadership and vibrant community of Englewood Arts, whose collaborative energy shaped every phase of this work, and especially: GK Callahan and Jason Conaway, Darlene Carpenter and Tammy Parsons, Byron and Jane Constance, Peyton Follis, Cheryl Gail and Jim Baggett, KE Griffin, Robb Gann, Bill McLeod, Thad McCullough, Steven Potter, Brent Schondelmeyer, Monty Short and DeAnna Skedel.
Appreciation is also extended to the following experts, whose guidance and critical insights helped sharpen the thinking behind this project and its execution: Shannon Brock, Elad Debi, Adva Dror, Bryan LeBeau, Johnny Mansour, Shirai Neumann, Timna Neumann, Hall Rockefeller, Dan Saal, Steve Schechter.
Lastly, the artist would like to thank the participants, friends and family members whose support enriched this project: Yossi Abta, Farida Badran, Ami Cohen, Gil & Leah Elisha, Lucy Feller, Forsan Hussein, Alon Harris, Hadar Hermon, Noam Hermon, Dima Khavin, Yael Limoni Merkel, Efrat Manaster, Miriam Manaster, Stacey Menchel Kussell, Pini Moshe, Martin Rosenberg, Miriam and Dan Scharf, Sigal Seeber, Melanie Sherman and Philipp Eirich, Marla and Gideon Stein, Ben and Elia Stern, Hadassah Tamir, and Marta Wolf.
