The show title is taken from a Leonard Cohen song which reworks the prayer Unetaneh Tokef, sung on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to consider who will live or die in the coming year.
Buckman explains: “It’s a bit dark, but I was thinking about the Jewish people’s history with attempts to burn us alive.
“Leonard Cohen and his music is personal to me and my family. My mum chose to have his track Alexandra Leaving as her funeral song.”
The collection includes portraits on vintage tablecloths, created using Buckman’s signature process: she paints onto the material with ink and acrylic before hand-embroidering over the top. The subjects, Buckman’s Jewish family and friends, are depicted with affection and honesty.
“They’re not staged portraits, they’re mostly inspired by these candid moments that I capture on my camera,” says Buckman, explaining how the collection started. “And I began to paint them, and then embroider and appliqué them, and I was thinking a lot about our resilience and our joy and beauty, as well as these feelings of not belonging and whatnot.”
Zoë Buckman explores Jewish identity, memory, and resilience in her new body of work (Picture: Abbey Drucker)[Missing Credit]
There are also hanging sculptures featuring boxing gloves – a recurring motif in Buckman’s work – and tallits and yalmukes are on show too.
Born in Hackney but now living in New York, 40-year-old Buckman captured her own sense of Jewish identity in a self-portrait.
She recalls: “I usually wear a stack of necklaces, and I took off all of them except for my Magen David. It was so small it ended up being this tiny little embroidered star right on this much larger piece, but it was also deliberate. I’m in my studio clothes – I’m an artist. A British girl – here’s my cup of tea. I’ve got this one gold necklace around my neck – I am a Jew. This is my bed. This is my space. This is who I am.”
One uncompromising piece uses text to confront the horrific rape denial that followed October 7, stating starkly: “and still women will tell a woman or what remains of her bones that they are lying”.
The impact of that dark day two years ago has not diminished one iota for Buckman: “Suddenly the whole world changed for us, and there was almost overnight for many of us, feelings of isolation and demonisation.”
Buckman – who was married to Friends star David Schwimmer from 2010 to 2017 – has defied the online trolls and the anti-Zionists blacklists of the art world.
Buckman created intimate portraits of Jewish friends and family based off photographs (Picture: Abbey Drucker)[Missing Credit]
She has a resilient optimism as her most personal collection to date goes on display.
“I feel really grateful that even in this climate of extreme division, there are curators and museums and also gallerists who are not Jewish, who are really embracing my voice and my work and what I have to say.
“It’s a good reminder that not everyone is turned off by this current moment of division and ostracism,” she adds.
Who By Fire is on at the Mindy Solomon Gallery in Miami until January 10, 2026.
