Los Angeles-based and Orange County-raised artist Hannah Lupton Reinhard’s newest solo exhibition, “Are We Here Yet?,” is currently on display in Rusha & Co., from Feb. 8 to March 15. The exhibition celebrates themes of diaspora, cohabitation, and tradition’s place in modern Judaism. As gallery visitors enter the exhibit, they are met with a series of vibrant paintings — many featuring overwhelmingly feminine women as subjects — painted in bright oranges and pinks, deep blues and greens, and illuminated by Swarovski crystals placed intricately across the works.
Several of the women in the paintings, including in works “I Still Light Candles” and “Transience,” represent manifestations of Reinhard’s personal Jewish faith, where she colorfully interrupts today’s world of contemporary, Zionism-focused Judaism with traditional aspects of Yiddishkeit– a concept that describes the way of life associated with Ashkenazi Judaism.
In Reinhard’s “I Still Light Candles,” a woman kneels on a cliff by the ocean, with a serene face, shrouded by a headscarf. A pair of ornate, golden candlesticks hold two candles. In the top left corner, the words “I still light candles every Friday” are spelled out across the bright blue sky in Swarovski crystals — a reference to the Jewish practice of lighting candles each Friday evening before sunset to mark the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath.
The crystals are an integral component of Reinhard’s artistic style. They are an ode to her grandmother, who worked as a Swarovski jeweler throughout the artist’s childhood. According to Reinhard, they represent a “very innate, young girl’s desire to have sparkly things,” and further develop the hyper-femininity of the pieces.
Another key part of her designs is traditional Jewish women’s head coverings. “A lot of the figures have some sort of headscarf or shroud over them,” explained Reinhard. “And it’s supposed to represent modesty, in this very literal, kind of cheeky way. But it’s also supposed to be representing this sort of Eastern European, like pre-World War II, what you think of as ‘Babushka’ and that very specific moment in time in Jewish history.”
This gravitation toward a placeless, nomadic embodiment of Judaism is central to Reinhard’s work, and her own commitment to the coexistence of cultures. “In my life, I try to embody the opposite of [the rejection of diaspora], which is being inclusive, and having a very rich community of different people from different places, and not discriminating against anyone because of where they’re from or what their religion is,” she said.
Alongside the Jewish women she paints, Reinhard also beautifully weaves in women of non-Jewish backgrounds, placing emphasis on the idea of cohabitation and celebration of diversity through the diaspora.
In “Allegory of Sin and Repair,” two women sit on a beach, wearing headscarves and bikinis, smiling as they create sandcastles by the water. Behind them, a beach house is engulfed in flames, with black clouds of smoke filling the air beyond the two women. The painting is Reinhard’s biggest painting, featuring her two childhood best friends. Originally starting as a reference to climate change and war, the piece took on a new meaning as fires devastated Los Angeles in Jan. 2025.
The painter’s favorite piece, “Promised Land,” features three women on the sand by the ocean, leaning on each other as three birds fly above them. “It was the first piece that I started,” she said, “so it kind of defined the show and set the tone and the theme for everything.” The birds carry two pink ribbons, each outlined with Swarovski crystals.
Lupton Reinhard’s “Are We Here Yet?” masterfully captures the depth of diaspora in visual form, inviting viewers to embrace the “other.” The intertwinement of the lives of both Jewish and non-Jewish women in a community of inclusion is ultimately what ties her work together, leaving space for intimacy beyond heritage, and putting forth the invitation to live out tradition beyond expectation.
