Two artists really influenced me: glass artist Dale Chihuly and artist Niki de Saint Phalle.
Chihuly had an exhibition at the Tower of David in 1999. At the time, I was an eight-year-old boy and I remember the contrast between the colors, the aesthetic, the forms of the work, and their size. This exhibition left the greatest impression on me and became a very meaningful memory for me.
At an older age, I became familiar with the work of Niki de Saint Phalle. I researched her life and works, which are very free, colorful, and not bound by rules. I really liked her ability to create art that was rough around the edges but still encompasses happiness and positivity. I found her character fascinating as well. Her life was very hectic, and her personal experiences projected onto her work. It happens to every
I want to interrupt people's routine life, mainly as they walk down the street and encounter art in a public space. I want the work to be a starting point for a conversation, to enter people's thoughts. In my work with Keter chairs, I knew what kinds of discourses could come up, whether they were the ones I intended to stimulate or not. I knew that people could think of the chairs in contexts of violence, ceremonies, and funerals. But I was aiming to address notions of plasticity, the cycle of movement, and death. There is something very alive in the installations but it is actually the deadest material that can be.
My work with Keter chairs started in my graduation project at Shankar. I chose an unusual project for the department, focusing on performance, music, movement, and space. Although performance in design had already existed a century back, in Oskar Schlemmer's stage workshop at the Bauhaus, it was not common within the department.
In the artwork "Vanishing act", I am initially the performer and creator, until at some point the work covers me and takes on center stage. This is the acceptance of the design process. When I design something and put it out there in the world, people no longer necessarily know who I am. I stay behind the scenes.
Before academia, I had no distinction between art and design. For me, anything that was visually different from the norm was a work of art. In a chair, I see a kind of artistic compass, a connecting factor between art and design. Even before I started studying, I liked that there were different types of chairs. That's why when I heard about the industrial design department at Shenkar, I first asked if they made chairs there. When I realized that they did, I went for it. Today I know the distinction between the fields and use it in my work.
The artist and designer in me support each other. On a practical level, industrial design studies gave me the tools to work on a certain vision and execute it so that it looks the way I want it to. An industrial designer has technical knowledge of how to create things, which greatly promotes my process and influences my creative decisions so that they are made from a position of control. I call upon the industrial designer in me in art projects.
Ori Shifrin Anavi, 31, artist and designer, lives and works in Tel Aviv.
