Zoë Buckman’s “Who By Fire” is at Mindy Solomon through January 10, 2026. Photo: Zachary Balber

Brooklyn-based Zoë Buckman has made her name through a bold approach to textile and embroidery—a medium long associated with subordinate female labor—transforming it from a vessel of generational memory into a stage for broader sociopolitical commentary and denunciations. In her work, embroidery moves from the domestic sphere into the political, turning traditionally feminized labor into a mode of testimony while also celebrating and crystallizing intimate moments as representations of broader, universal human states.

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Buckman’s practice has long centered on gender disparities, challenging representations of women by asserting—through her authorship—not only control over the historically masculine gaze but also the autonomy of expression and self-definition that emerges through an inverted dynamic empowering her subjects in both their physical and emotional realities. With her latest show, which opened during Art Basel Miami Beach at Mindy Solomon Gallery, the artist shifts toward a wider lens, seeking to claim the dignity of—and elevate—the Jewish community she belongs to, moving beyond stereotyped portrayals and addressing the discrimination and isolation it has faced amid the ongoing backlash to the war in Gaza.

Buckman’s background was initially in photography, she explains to Observer as we walk through the show. Photography remains the starting point for these embroideries, allowing her to capture the humanity of her subjects as it manifests in the moment.

“I started in photography. That was where I got my art education,” she explains, noting how she still goes everywhere with her little film point-and-shoot camera. “I’m always looking for that genuine, authentic expression beyond any kind of structure—the moment: these authentic moments between people in my life,” Buckman adds. “Sometimes it’s between me and someone close to me, or sometimes it’s just a moment when humanity happens to manifest.”

Drawing its title from Leonard Cohen’s haunting reinterpretation of the Jewish prayer Unetaneh Tokef, the exhibition’s themes of mortality, judgment and spiritual reckoning and reawakening echo through Jewish ritual and lived experience. Each subject is depicted in a moment of inner reawakening—confronting emotional fragility and vulnerability while also embracing the expansive potential of their inner life. They share this richness deliberately, even when such imaginative and psychological responses run counter to the rational systems of productivity and functionality that dominate contemporary life—a society that, in doing so, appears to have lost one of its most profound values: empathy and the awareness that we are all........

© Observer