In a culture which values novelty and progress, transience seems to pervade our lives, bringing the permanence of anything and everything into question. In these times, the need for something which transcends our circumstances is most felt, and so, we search for something which endures.

The ancient Hebrew text, Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), is a philosophical and theological inquiry in which the narrator questions every human measure of success: the accumulation of wealth, power, achievements, and knowledge. His declaration is that “there is nothing new under the sun.” In this assertion, he concludes that there is no meaning to be found by human endeavors alone, but that it must come from beyond ourselves.

Nothing is New, Everything is New presents a conversation between the contemporary artwork of current UCLA students and this ancient, biblical text. The pieces in this show each display a posture of inquiry: dissecting memories, rewriting their identities, and imagining trajectories in order to make and search out meaning.

What can we learn from these artists and the author of Kohelet?