Edori Fertig was born into a Jewish family in New York, USA in 1957, studying at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and Massachusetts College of Art, before moving to London in 1984 to continue training at Camberwell School of Art. In her work she explores the legacy of her Jewish origins, combining ancient symbols with more personal imagery relating to her mother’s and her grandmother’s past. Fertig often incorporates discarded objects within her art, visually equating the unwanted with her own family’s refugee experience.
Painter and printmaker, Edori Fertig was born into a Jewish family in New York, USA in 1957. She showed an early artistic talent as a child, filling small notebooks with drawings when she was only four years old. She studied illustration at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where she met her future husband, the British artist Stephen Read, followed by Art Education at the Massachusetts College of Art. In 1984 she moved to London, gaining her MA in Printmaking from Camberwell School of Arts (now Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London).
Following the tragic death of her mother while she was still a student at RISD, Fertig began exploring the theme of maternity, creating powerful and ambivalent images, recalling the work of artists such as Amanda Faulkner and Eileen Cooper. She was also inspired by Frida Kahlo, whose surrealism, colour, Mexican and folk art influence she admires, as well as Picasso, Matisse and Chagall (Nunhead Art Trail interview). Since becoming a mother herself, a preoccupation with motherhood has begun to combine with a need to explore the symbolic legacy of her Jewish origins. The Menorah, with its multiple references to the tree of life, to organic life forms and to flame, is a major source of imagery. In the etching Hannukiah, for example, the Hanukkah candelabrum is fused visually with the rib-cage of the central female figure, its inverted form reminiscent not only of bones but also of a tallit (the prayer shawl normally worn by men). An autobiographical painter, Fertig often combines ancient symbols with more personal imagery, relating to her mother’s and her grandmother’s past. In Shabbat (My Grandmother’s Gloves), she incorporated a plaster imprint of gloves which belonged to her grandmother into an image resonant not only of the Sabbath blessings but also of the stylised hand motif (hamsa) traditionally worn as an amulet against the evil eye; gloves were embedded in the print in the same way that her grandmother was embedded in her memory. Fertig regularly takes inspiration from discarded objects that she finds in charity shops, markets, skips or on seaside walks, visually equating the unwanted with her own family’s experience of being refugees. She has declared that her work is inspired by her ‘compulsive need to recycle […] to find beauty in the overlooked and abandoned’ (South London Women Artists). For instance, she collected pieces of lino flooring from friends who were doing up their homes and used them to create mosaics, while her series Nunhead Walls consisted of composites of wallpaper pieces and family photographs found in markets around South London. Her own collections of found objects include bones, driftwood, shoes soles from beach walks and vintage lino found in local skips. Wildlife outside her garden studio also serves as constant inspiration.
Regularly exhibited within a Jewish context, in 1996 Fertig's work featured in Rubies & Rebels at the Barbican Centre, curated by Vera Grodzinski and Monica Bohm-Duchen, focusing on contemporary Jewish female artists. Her pieces stood ‘as memorials to her mother and grandmother’ and incorporated photographs and other objects in wax, the latter referencing the yahrzeit memorial candle which, in the Jewish tradition, is lit annually to remember deceased family members (Werner 1996, p. 36). In 2001 her work Memory Train, exploring the theme of Jewish exile, was included in the Jewish Artist Awards exhibition organised jointly by Ben Uri Gallery and Friends of the Hebrew University. In 2003 she exhibited paper cuts at the Jewish Museum Camden and held a joint exhibition with Gretta Sarfaty in Sarfaty’s gallery, Sartorial Contemporary Art. In 2004 Fertig exhibited in Ben Uri's International Jewish Artist of the Year Award (IJAYA) exhibition, contributing a print made with old family photographs and a lace runner saved from her late parents’ house, functioning as a powerful memorial to her dead relatives; she exhibited in the same event again two years later. Fertig also showed with Greg Becker in a number of London venues (2013, 2016 and 2019). Further solo exhibitions included Greenwich Picture House (2010) and Omnibus Theatre (2020); her exhibition Meditations on Blue, featuring large tonal still lifes created during Covid lockdown, was held at the Small House Gallery in 2021.
Fertig is a member of South London Women Artists (SLWA), a group of women based in South London who regularly collaborate through exhibitions, workshops and events. In 2006, she founded the art collective, Skip Sisters, a group of artists and designers whose name is inspired by their interest in using materials of humble origin in their creations. She is a regular contributor to the annual Dulwich Artists’ Open House festival and the Nunhead Art Trail and has also organised workshops for the Jewish Museum Camden, including ‘Who am I?’ in 2003 whi8ch explored issues of identity. Fertig's work is not currently represented in UK public collections.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Edori Fertig]
Publications related to [Edori Fertig] in the Ben Uri Library