Focus Gallery: Oded Halahmy: Models in Wood

Oded Halahmy: Models in Wood presents sculptures made primarily in the 1970s, following Halahmy’s move to New York from London after studying at Saint Martin’s School of Art. Their titles evoke family, ritual, and spatial orientation, while their forms often suggest ladders and windows. Mostly made in advance of the artist’s monumental sculptures, each work is an intimate and hand-wrought expression of a singular artistic language rooted in memory and movement.

Born in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1938 to a family of Orthodox Jews, Halahmy learned to carve in his father’s goldsmith shop. In 1951 the family was airlifted from Iraq to Israel as part of a mass migration of Jews fleeing persecution amid rising antisemitism. This early experience of displacement only deepened his connection to the cultures of Mesopotamia, which have continuously shaped the form and meaning of his work. As the artist explains, “I found my way back to Iraq through making art.”

This focused installation is located on Floor 3 within Identity, Culture, and Continuity: Stories from the Collection of the Jewish Museum.