For years, Robert Russell has painted still lifes of teacups and Allach porcelain. His latest series, Stateless Objects, turns to Judaica—kiddush cups, havdalah sets, challah platters—from once-thriving Jewish communities across North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.
These objects, now held in collections, echo the decline of those communities due to antisemitism, violence, and forced migration. Removed from their ritual contexts, Russell’s oil paintings engage in conceptual repatriation, raising questions of cultural memory and preservation. His canvases also feature German porcelain made before the Nazi era—teacups and shakers that now seem like spectral remnants.
Floating in velvety voids, these painted objects whisper, I am here. Together, the works explore the fragility of memory and the human role in its restoration—painting not to recover the past, but to witness and honor it.
