Robin Bernstein
Singularity, 2023
String and Wax on Wood 43" x 40"
"The Singularity is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable consequences for human civilization."
Robin Bernstein
Hope Dies Last, 2023
String and Wax on Wood 60" x 32"
Hopeium: The powerful human desire for hope in the face of all logic
Robin Bernstein
Dominionism, 2024
String and Wax on Wood 41" x 37"
Dominion theology/Dominionism is a Christian political ideology that seeks to replace Democracy with a White Christian government based on their understanding of biblical law (in that 'God grants Dominion over the earth"). The Chief Justice of Alabama, Tom Parker, believes that God created Government and it is "heartbreaking that we have let it go into the possession of others". He and others have established that these 7 Mountains of US life must be taken over by White Christians: Education, Government, Family, Arts and Entertainment, Business, and Media.
Robin Bernstein
The Audible Gasp, 2023
String and Wax on Wood 46" x 38"
Fear of reprisal, rape, torture, and murder motivated tens of thousands of German citizens to commit mass suicide as the victorious Russians advanced in April and May 1945. Civilians, government workers and military personnel jumped, cut their wrists, shot themselves (and their families), or bit down on capsules of Potassium Cyanide, which ends life within 4 minutes. Death by Potassium Cyanide creates an Audible Gasp, which can be heard when respiration ceases.
Robin Bernstein
Flood the Zone, 2022
String and Wax on Wood 52" x 36"
The people of the United States and the world now live in a time of public mistrust, false news, propaganda, and encouragement of ignorance. Social media has contributed to this situation. Funds for investigative journalism and local news have dried up leaving people essentially alone with outlets like Russian State TV and Fox News. In this environment, Steve Bannon, an influential far-right political provocateur and conspiracy theorist advocates for the violent overthrow of democracies and his message spreads. Bannon holds racist, antisemitic and white supremest beliefs and believes the way to undermine truth is to “Flood the Zone with Shit”. In 2021 journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize"for their courageous fight for freedom of expression in the face of authoritarian governments”. Ressa and Muratov represent all journalists around the world who bring the truth to light and power to account - despite personal danger and sacrifice. They are true heroes, noble, and deserving of admiration.
Robin Bernstein
In Defense of Nature, 2024
String and Wax on Wood 50" x 52"
People concerned about climate change can find themselves inadvertently aligning with a racist, xenophobic, and antisemitic ideology masquerading as environmentalism. Nostalgia, sustainability, and self sufficiency (in the manner of Cottage Core, an aesthetic promoting simple living in the countryside) are also core principles of Ecofascism. Many ecofascists follow an ideology "which blames the demise of the environment on overpopulation, immigration, modernization, and over-industrialization, problems that followers think could be partly remedied through the mass murder of refugees in Western countries”. They believe that white people ought to have exclusive control over natural resources, and promote a reciprocal relationship between homeland and an identified nation group. Past mass shooters have used the principles of ecofacism as reasons for their terrorist attacks in their written manifestos.
Robin Bernstein
I Do Not Say You Are Lying, 2020
String and Wzx on Wood 48" x 42"
In July 1943, Felix Frankfurter, a Jewish US Supreme Court Justice met with and listened carefully to Polish diplomat Jan Karski. Karski, a Polish Catholic, was also a courier for the Polish resistance and had been smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto and the Izbica Transit Camp to personally witness the atrocities being committed against Jews. Karski gave Frankfurter a lengthy account of what he had personally observed, including mass starvation, dead and dying children, and the beating and transport of Jews. Justice Frankfurter responded to Karski’s story with a combination of acknowledgement, denial, disbelief and apathy. He consequently did nothing to raise the alarm about the German action that was targeting and murdering innocent Jewish civilians that resulted in 6,000,000 deaths. The moral courage of Jan Karski encourages us to both bear and share witness. This story resonates by speaking to the current state of urgency as autocratic regimes strengthen around the world.
Robin Bernstein
T4, 2021
String and Wax on Wood 48" x 58"
A primary goal of the Nazi regime was to create a superior German race. In 1939 they began the secret T4 Euthanasia program designed to systematically murder all German infants, toddlers, and children up to age 17 who displayed or were diagnosed with ANY physical or mental disability. These children were seen as “useless eaters” and a financial burden to society. Initially, 10,000 children died by gassing, starvation, and lethal injection. These deaths were precursors to the killing operations that the Nazis instituted in order to kill over 11,000,000 people in the death, concentration, and slave labor camps. By war’s end over 250,000 disabled children and adults had also been murdered. T4 was the code-name of the illicit program which came from the Berlin street address of the program's coordinating office: Tiergartenstrasse 4.
Robin Bernstein
DePopulation, 2021
String and Wax on Wood 45" x 34"
Robin Bernstein
The Audible Gasp (detail), 2023
String and Wax on Wood 46" x 38"
The Audible Gasp, detail
