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On Their Way Up
Rising Voices in Israeli Art
Israel's vivid art scene is ever-evolving, especially in Tel Aviv. The fast pace of the city requires artists to reinvent themselves constantly, as art lovers continuously seek fresh voices.
The month of July is a true festival for any lover of emerging artists, with graduate shows popping up across the city like umbrellas on the Tel Aviv beach.
This year, the graduate show at Shenkar College's Multidisciplinary Art School definitely delivered – here are some of our favorite highlights.
Photo Credit: @natihokiart
Photo Credit: @natihokiart
Tal Bar Meir, Pluto R: Bar Meir's work is also inspired by images of non-Western societies. However, her sculptures rely on the images created by ancient pagan societies rather than their depiction in Western Orientalist eyes.
The stuffed figures, sewn manually, form a sort of twisted, perverted circus that is also filled with humanity and softness. Walking the thin line between the unpolished, basic drives of humans and the ecstatic sensation of spiritual transcendence that exceeds any corporal sensation, Bar Meir experiments with all things human.
After walking around the figures for a few minutes, their repulsive characteristics begin to fade away; instead, we are witnessing ourselves, sometimes in control, sometimes a total mess, but always in a process of balancing our physical and mental beings.
Photo Credit: @natihokiart
Photo Credit: @natihokiart
Liz Marr, Tigers, etc. – a Collection of Spaces: For her graduate show, artist Liz Marr exhibits large canvases, featuring black and white images of tigers in an abstract space.
The surreal setting is amplified by a collection of ceramic 3-D prints, placed on the floor. Abstract as they may seem, these ceramic objects are actually details from the drawings – manipulated digitally and printed.
The manual craft transforms into a digitalized and mechanically printed sculpture. The paintings themselves provide a sense of a-location; they do not resemble any familiar place. Inspired by orientalist drawing as well as Russian folk stories from her childhood, Marr reflects on locality and belonging.
Photo Credit: @natihokiart
Photo Credit: @natihokiart
Omer Ohana, Sits in Tents: one of the most unusual artworks in this show is Ohana's performance piece. Ohana sat on a ready-made street bench, found in the Shenkar area, every day the exhibition was open to the public.
This durational, Marina- Abramović-style artwork includes significant physical endurance. Moreover, it has sparked constant questions amongst the exhibition's visitors. "Who is this girl on the bench? Is she part of the piece? What is she looking at? Can I sit next to her?" These were some of the questions on passersby's minds.
Ohana explained that the artwork originated from her habit-turned-artwork of sitting for hours on a specific bench in Florentin neighborhood, first in order to encounter the glance of a certain person, and later just to "be and observe". Her simple act of "presence" emphasizes the fast pace of modern life as well as the balance between individuals in a shared public space.
Photo Credit: @natihokiart
Ella Altman, One Thousand and One Nights: Altman's 8-minute bilingual video, shifting between Hebrew and Arabic, is essentially a love letter to an unknown person.
The artist made the work in order to approach someone for whom she was too shy to declare her love. For her, artistic production is the outlet where she feels like anything can be said. Private intimacy is replaced with a public declaration.
The video itself, however, is not completely optimistic. At times, it takes a dark turn, referring to a recent personal tragedy. The constant shift between romance and tragedy, between Hebrew and Arabic, between public and intimate – is what makes this video so mesmerizing
Ella Altman, One Thousand and One Nights
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