Still from “Swifter than Eagles,” on view in “Rae Stern: Afterimage” at the Museum of Art + Light (Museum of Art + Light)
‘Rae Stern: Afterimage’ exhibit at the Museum of Art + Light retraces a mid-century American diplomat’s visits to Israel to profound effect
Out of thin air. The white horse appears on the hill out of thin air.
Or The horse appears out of the blue. We could simply say unexpectedly. But what does it mean to say more by adding a layer of language to the unexpected moment? Out of the blue. Out of thin air. Out of nowhere. What do layers of meaning add to the moment? And in Rae Stern’s latest exhibition, “Afterimage,” on view at the Museum of Art + Light in Manhattan, Kansas, what is the significance of this white horse that appears in the image — out of nowhere?
For Israeli-born multimedia artist Rae Stern, there are always more layers: layers to uncover, to reveal, to comprehend, to dig through and to be possessed by. In “Afterimage,” Stern’s work offers a quiet meditation on humanity’s complex relationships to the layers of place, memory and history. From the hard permanence of rock to the gentle ephemera of paper, “Afterimage” is an encounter with our own assumptions, and an invitation to suspend our cynicism and knee-jerk reactions long enough to witness subtle shifts, small movements and gentle nudges that loosen our certainties long enough to elicit curiosity.
But what about that white horse? It doesn’t appear at first. Among the many works included in the exhibition, “Swifter Than Eagles” is one of the first that draws attention in the gallery. A large translucent sheet of thick, pulp-pocked paper hangs from the ceiling, and the light passing through the paper reveals a black-and-white image of a large tree on a hillside. The image is an illusion: This is not a photograph; there is no pigment. Rather, Stern has developed a technique for papermaking in which she sprays wet pulp in layers to form a large sheet, and then carefully, surgically, tweezes the wet pulp across the surface to place it where it belongs. The thinner the pulp, the more light passes through. The thicker the pulp, the less light. Once the wet pulp is set and dry, the sheet is suspended in the air against backlighting that reveals the image. In “Swifter Than Eagles” a tree appears, formed from Stern’s patient layering of the pulp.
Here in the gallery, the materiality of the paper paired with the image of the tree is enough to catch the viewer’s attention. But then, slowly and quietly, the black-and-white still image gives way to color and movement. A projector behind the large sheet reveals a brief scene surrounding the tree and the hilltop. A white horse appears. It is prancing. No, it is pacing. It begins to run off down the hill. No, it is tethered to an unseen post. It struggles against the pull of the rope. What had been a still scene is now activated by the motions of the horse, the sway in the trees, and the questions that may arise for the viewer.
This exhibition is the culmination of Stern’s two-year residency as the inaugural visiting artist at the Englewood Arts Center in Independence, Missouri. When Stern arrived at Englewood, she received an invitation to create a body of work in response to researching the archives at the Truman Library. Her research led her to the dossier of Charles F. Knox, an American diplomat whose journals, notes and photographs of his visits to Israel coincided with the state’s founding years. Intrigued by Knox’s perspective as a visitor to her homeland long before her birth, Stern returned to Israel to revisit some of the places she considered familiar in order to see them anew through the eyes of an American diplomat 75 years earlier. The work included in “Afterimage” is the result of Stern’s investigations, observations and permissions to see the same place from different angles and perspectives. This informs her insistence that our polarized and hyper-politicized views of the world often prevent us from seeing the layers and complexities that color and deepen our shared reality.
Raised by an Israeli mother and an American father — both Jewish yet shaped by vastly different cultures and temperaments — Stern learned early that truth is rarely singular.
Growing up in Israel in a secular Jewish household, she was surrounded by a society where questioning authority was not only allowed but also expected. Add to that a Jewish tradition of dialogue, argument and multiple truths, and you get a foundation for an artist unafraid to push back and insist upon different ways of seeing the realities of conflict and coexistence.
For Stern, the presence of disagreement isn’t inherently divisive, but rather an opportunity for deeper understanding.
On one of her returns home to Israel, Stern was driving to visit the city of Acre to visit one of the sights Knox had photographed. Acre is a city with a long history of shared community and coexistence among different cultures and religions. On her way to Acre Stern glanced out her car window and saw the white horse on top of the hill. Entranced by the odd sight, Stern pulled the car off the road and set up her camera to film. Here on this hilltop, in a land once again on the brink of being torn apart by war and conflict, Stern witnessed a moment that felt full of significance. “The white horse holds significance for several of the Abrahamic faiths that consider this land to be sacred.” But it means something different for each faith. “The white horse stands not as a singular symbol,” says Stern, “but as a prism through which memory, prophecy, and politics refract.”
Such narrative and context can serve to deepen one’s experience of this exhibition, though it is worth noting that the work itself is stunning, both in its overall effect and in its observable intricacy of execution. Stern’s ability to take a vision from concept through a process of experimentation and deliver a body of work with such care, nuance and brilliance suggests an artist whose achievements will never mark a moment of arrival but merely an invitation to launch her next exploration. We are fortunate to have such an artist’s work among the inaugural exhibitions at the new Museum of Art + Light. While the Nelson-Atkins, Crystal Bridges and other cultural institutions rush to upgrade facilities to accommodate the emerging future of “immersive experiential art events,” they would do well to heed the wisdom on display at MoA+L by ensuring gallery opportunities for contemporary installation artists such as Stern — whose work is immersive if nothing else — rather than merely rush to fill all these new spaces with three-story digital projections of Monet’s water lilies.
Alongside the works on paper, “Afterimage” also includes a series titled “Attempts at Coexistence,” which are small sculptures formed from Stern’s experiments in fusing glass and rock. During her time at Englewood, Stern worked with a team of glassblowers to see if glass and rock could somehow be fused together. The glassblowers were skeptical; their experience told them that glass and rock are incompatible. Stern carried into the studio a pile of rocks from Israel, along with a hopeful insistence that these experiments were worthy of time and energy.
Some of the “attempts” included in Afterimage are small stones enmeshed within clear glass, as if slowly sinking into water. Others are rocks perched on top of glass, the glass refusing to allow the rock to permeate the surface and join. Others are larger rocks pressed against blown glass. Some are bound together with rope or wire, suggesting that the only things keeping the two together are external forces. In some of the attempts, the rock cracked; in others, the glass broke. Examining each one is its own opportunity to see what happens when the artist insisted on trying once again in a new way, embracing at once the lessons learned from previous attempts and the dogged insistence to not quit trying just yet. All of these attempts capture a moment that is simultaneously relational, full of tension and possibility.
Through her practice, Rae Stern offers something rare to our current moment: not answers or platitudes, but a rigorous and poetic way of being with the questions. Deeply committed to nuance, Stern’s work in “Afterimage” resists the puritanical binaries that dominate contemporary discourse. The work itself is a quiet criticism of our current cultural moment in which media platforms reward extremism and moral certainty, while silencing slower, quiet, curious perspectives. Her work gently yet clearly pushes against that tide. Our universally shared images might carry different meanings across culture and religion, yet the reality of such an image’s prismatic presence for us all is worthy of our pause and wonder — wonder over the mere fact that it appears at all, as if out of thin air.
“Rae Stern: Afterimage” continues at the Museum of Art + Light, 316 Pierre St., Manhattan, Kansas, through February 2026. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday and Wednesday-Saturday, and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Closed Tuesday. Admission charges vary. For more information, 785.775.5444 or artlightmuseum.org.
