Jewish Glamour: Isaac Mizrahi, Danielle Durchslag & Negin Farsad

Isaac Mizrahi has worked extensively in the entertainment industry as an actor, host, writer, designer and producer for over 30 years. He is the subject and co-creator of Unzipped, a documentary following the making of his Fall 1994 collection which received an award at the Sundance Film Festival. He hosted his own television talk show The Isaac Mizrahi Show for seven years, has written two books, and has made countless appearances in movies and on television. He currently serves as a judge on Project Runway: All-Stars.

He is Chief Designer for the Isaac Mizrahi brands, a division of Xcel Brands, Inc. In 2009, Mizrahi launched his lifestyle collection, “ISAACMIZRAHILIVE!” on QVC. His IMNYC collection is currently sold at Lord & Taylor and Hudson’s Bay Company.

Mizrahi has directed productions of A Little Night Music and The Magic Flute for the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. Annually, he directs and narrates his production of the children’s classic Peter and The Wolf at The Guggenheim Museum in New York. He has performed cabaret at Café Carlyle, Joe’s Pub, West Bank Café and City Winery locations across the country.

Mizrahi has his own production company, Isaac Mizrahi Entertainment, under which he has several projects in development in television, theatre and literature. His memoir, I.M., was published in February 2019.

Danielle Durchslag is an artist and filmmaker based in Brooklyn. She has exhibited around the world, including solo exhibitions at Denny Gallery, Yale University, and Four Corners Gallery, in London. Her work has shown at venues including The Jewish Museum, the Toronto Shorts International Film Festival, the Invisible Dog Art Center, The Jewish Museum of the City of Vienna, The Queens Museum, The UK Jewish Film Festival, Winkleman Gallery, The Jewish Museum of Maryland, The Bronx Museum, The Philadelphia Film and Media Festival, Foley Gallery, The Ackland Art Museum, The Moscow Jewish Film Festival, Davidson Gallery, The New York Jewish Film Festival, and The Cannes Short Film Festival. Danielle’s work has been featured in Artforum, The New York Times, Photograph Magazine, Time Out New York, Clarion Content, The New York Post, The Forward, The Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, Lilith, The New York Daily News, The Independent, The Jewish News, The New York Observer, Image Journal, and on NPR radio, among others. She has appeared as a guest on many podcasts, including Fake the Nation, Judaism Unbound, The Standard Issue, The Savvy Creative, Disloyal, and Jew Too?. Danielle is a selected fellow of the New Jewish Culture Fellowship.

Negin Farsad was named one of 50 Funniest Women by Huffington Post, named one of the 10 Best Feminist Comedians by Paper Magazine, and was selected as a TEDFellow for her work in social justice comedy. She even gave a TEDTalk because they slipped up and let a comedian on their vaunted stage. She is the author of the recently released How To Make White People Laugh, a memoir-meets-social-justice-comedy manifesto which was nominated for the Thurber Prize for Humor and recommended by Oprah Magazine. Farsad is host of Fake the Nation, a political comedy podcast on the Earwolf network and she’s a regular panelist on NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. She appears on the current season of Nat Geo’s Year Million, the upcoming season of HBO’s High Maintenance, and the last season of Netflix’s Chelsea Handler Show.

She is also the director/writer/star of the rom-com 3rd Street Blackout, starring Janeane Garofalo, Ed Weeks, and John Hodgman (now available on Amazon). She has written for/appeared on Comedy Central, MTV, PBS, IFC, Nickelodeon and others. She is director/producer of the feature films The Muslims Are Coming! starring Jon Stewart, David Cross and Lewis Black and Nerdcore Rising starring Weird Al Yankovic (both available wherever movies are streamed/downloaded). She has written good-old fashioned articles for The Guardian, The Daily Beast, Oprah Magazine, Indiewire and others. She has sued New York State’s MTA over the right to put up funny posters about Muslims and WON.

She started her comedy career as a Cornell and Columbia-educated policy advisor for the City of New York.

The Invisible Dog and La MaMa Galleria are pleased to present JEWESS, a new solo exhibition featuring the costume / character work of Danielle Durchslag, and the artist’s most ambitious project to-date. JEWESS explores three powerful characters, all created by Durchslag, visually inspired by 1960’s glamour, Tudor court dressing, and early London punk. These personas meet at the crossroads of Jewish ritual, politics, and fashion.

Informed by clothing history and Jewish observance, Durchslag designs, makes, and wears intricate costumes and hats, to portray female characters of her invention with distinct, oppositional approaches to Jewish identity.

Each of the three characters on display in JEWESS is tethered to both a specific Jewish holiday and a set of political values. The fashion movements influencing Durchslag’s creations include 16th century Elizabethan Court attire, early London punk, and 1960’s American glamour.

The exhibition includes large-scale photographs of Durchslag posing as each character, videos of her performing as these personas, and life-sized, fully costumed mannequins of all three figures, physically positioned to reflect their personalities and dynamics with one another. Her characters represent right-wing, leftist, and “non-political” approaches to both Jewishness and Zionism. Collectively, this female trinity forms a portrait of some of the most meaningful divisions and tensions present, amongst and between Ashkenazi Jews, in post-World War II life, but from a feminist place of joy and play.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher The Invisible Dog Art Center & the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF)