wall No. 1 (lack of public interest)
Wall No. 1 (Lack of Public Interest), 2016, Exhibition View (photo Tal Nisim)
Thumb (detail), 2016
Medea killing her childs, invisible drawing (reenactment of a Roman sarcophagus), One black ink drop diluted in three liters of water on a wet whitewash wall, 2016
Medea killing her childs, invisible drawing (details)
Medea Sarcophagus, 140 - 150 C.E., marble, 65 x 227 cm (A scan of a postcard)
Wall No. 1 (Lack of Public interest)
Site specific interventions, 2016
Plaster board, joint compound(putty), screws, gypsum plaster, calcium, plaster powder, water, chicken wire, contact glue, plastic glue, newspapers, sponges, polyurethane, whitewash color, black ink.
In this site-specific intervention, I built in the gallery space a wall (340x260x60 cm) that touches neither the ceiling nor the walls of the space. On the wall, which also acts as a monument, she formed two things: on one side a sculptural action was created which imitates the act of subtraction. Since the wall is hollow and made of plaster (1 cm deep), the subtraction created, as well as the appearance of softness in the material, plays on an illusion of depth and flatness, hardness and flexibility. This work (Thumb) refers to the human body and its vulnerability. The mythological thumb pressed into the material leaves its traces on the surface of the work and provokes a physical experience in the human body. The shape of the thumb, which surely creates a hole in the wall and the construction for that hole, is taken from Caravaggio’s painting The Incredulity of Saint Thomas since the ideas of witnessing, sight and belief are a strong theme of this work.
On the second side I created an invisible drawing (Medea killing childs). The drawing appears as if it was erased, but in fact was already created as a buried or repressed image. The image itself, which is taken from a Roman sarcophagus, tells the story of Medea killing her own children, and it is painted on the wall in a similar technique as a fresco. With one black ink drop diluted in 3 liters of water, I recorded the image in a particular way that, on the one hand the image is tattooed into the wall, but on the other hand the image’s presence is hardly revealed. The same as in an analogue Photogram, the work has a photographic consciousness as the disappearance and reappearance of the image is also affected by lighting conditions; the closer the image gets to the light (fluorescent light and daylight) the more it disappears. The part of the image that is most damaged by the light is the face of Medea after the murder. She is already on her chariot of fire with the body of her 2 murdered children, and she flies away without retribution. This Deus ex machine, that exist in the myth of Medea, is reproduced again in this work by the power of the light that whitewashes the action.