As a conceptual contemporary artist and fifth-year Harvard Medical student, Jonah's work reflects the intersection of his lived experiences, his social commentary, and his passion for visual art. Jonah began studying visual art in high school and attended Brown University where he matriculated as a visual arts concentrator. While at Brown Jonah explored many different subjects and ultimately found himself captivated by neuroscience. This fascination led him to pursue a medical degree at Harvard, where he has spent the last five years training to become an ophthalmologist.
Prior to matriculating at Harvard, Jonah was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to live and work in Vidin Bulgaria.
Vidin is Bulgaria's poorest state. Consequentially, living there had its share of challenges. Jonah chronicled his journey through large scale paintings as well as through both digital and film photography.
Jonah specifically chose to engage with film in order to depict his experience with cameras that had historically been used in Bulgaria. Analog works captured in Bulgaria were taken using cameras manufactured in Dresden (1933), East Berlin (1960's), and Russia (1950s).
Jonah combined these two mediums while photographing his paintings in the spaces around Vidin that inspired them. He believes that through this format, his audience understands his experience more fully.
Jonah’s work is an attempt to bring his rural Bulgarian experience into the lives of his audience. His work centers around ideas of seasonal change, history taking, and the erasure of that history and its people.
Jonah's time in Vidin drastically influenced his approach to art making, and he continues to draw on the lessons learned in Bulgaria.
Throughout his medical education, he has found solace in his art practice, which allows him to process and express the complexities of his experiences in the hospital, clinic, and operating room. Since March of 2020, Jonah's artistic focus has shifted to center more on the expriences in patient care during the Covid-19 pandemic. Jonah's art reflects the emotional and psychological tolls of the pandemic on his own psyche as well as on our society at large. Specifically he focuses on social habituation and the development of social numbness.
Jonah hopes that his art makes you work. he hopes to leave you questioning what you have seen and contemplating its meaning.
