Noam Segal

Notes on the Index in Accelerated Digital Times, Pompeii Commitment Archeological Times, 2024.

This article unpacks the notion of the index in relation to contemporary technology. The indexicality offered by these technologies differs significantly from photography or other art forms that characterised the decade of the 1970s when Rosalind Krauss was writing. While indexicality is primarily identified with photography (the traces of light on a negative), it also exists in other art forms such as installation, dance and performance, all of which indicate a meaning that lies elsewhere.

Krauss formulated the notion of the index to reflect on the art of the 1970s, which had no apparent aesthetic political or philosophical characteristics that could be identified with a movement. Indexicality remains extremely useful for thinking about our own fractured aesthetic landscape, but the introduction of digital, networked technology and AI is a difference in kind that should be registered. AI systems present another form of objecthood that escapes existing categories of subject/object. In a similar way, quantum computing also reshapes some of our most basic understandings of space, time, cause, and separability.

Contemporary digital environments might therefore be productively considered through a notion of post-indexicality. In this article, Segal considers two main features of the index: temporality and causality.

PDF of the article is available here.

Maria Hassabi at FRONT INTERNATIONAL Triennial, Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, 2022 .

July 16 - October 2, 2022

Making its North American debut at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Maria Hassabi’s CANCELLED, a work for four female performers, moves within a soundscape that emphasizes an endless lifespan. The choreography utilizes Hassabi’s signature style of stillness and deceleration and displays representational female poses based on mannerisms throughout history. The use of verticality and frontality creates a form of resistance both as a metaphor and as a reality, reflecting on ideas that are directly related to the work’s title. CANCELLED, which is meticulously crafted, evokes and questions the subtle interchanges of power between subjects.

Hassabi’s methods for slowing down perception mirror FRONT International 2022’s curatorial attention to the long time frames that meaningful change—whether on a personal or social level—often requires.

CANCELLED was produced by the LUMA Foundation and premiered at LUMA ARLES as a result of the Artist-in-Residency Program. It was co-commissioned by and received additional support from FRONT International Triennial: Cleveland Museum of Art, in partnership with VIA Art Fund.

Performers: Elena Antoniou, Maria Hassabi, Alice Heyward, and Shelley Senter.
Sound Design: Stavros Gasparatos and Maria Hassabi.
Outfits: Victoria Bartlett.
Productions / Managment: Natasha Katerinopoulos.

Images: Maria Hassabi, CANCELLED, 2022. Performance. Courtesy of the artist. © Maria Hassabi. Photo courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art.

12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, Still Present!, 2022.

June 11 - September 18, 2022

The 12th Berlin Biennale was curated by Kader Attia in collaboration with Ana Teixeira Pinto, Đỗ Tường Linh, Marie Helene Pereira, Noam Segal, and Rasha Salti.

On the occasion of the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, artists from around the globe engage with the legacies of modernity and the resulting state of planetary emergency. They map the world with its ruptures and contradictions, create counter-trajectories to the colonial narrative, and propose decolonial strategies for the future. How can a decolonial ecology be shaped? What role can non-Western feminist movements play in the reappropriation of history? How can the debate on restitution be reinvented beyond the return of plundered goods? Can the field of emotion be reclaimed through art?

The exhibition was on view at: Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg and Pariser Platz, Dekoloniale Memory Culture in the City, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart –
Berlin, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, and Stasi Headquarters. Campus for Democracy.

With works by:

Alex Prager; Amal Kenawy; Ammar Bouras; Antonio Recalcati, Enrico Baj, Erró, Gianni Dova, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Roberto Crippa; Ariella Aïsha Azoulay; Asim Abdulaziz; Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme; Binta Diaw; Birender Yadav; Calida Garcia Rawles; Christine Safatly; Clément Cogitore; DAAR – Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti; Dana Levy; Đào Châu Hải; David Chavalarias; Deneth Piumakshi Veda Arachchige; Driss Ouadahi; Dubréus Lhérisson; Elske Rosenfeld; Etinosa Yvonne; Florian Sông Nguyễn; Forensic Architecture; Haig Aivazian; Hasan Özgür Top; Imani Jacqueline Brown; Jean-Jacques Lebel; Jeneen Frei Njootli; Jihan El-Tahri; João Polido; Khandakar Ohida; Lamia Joreige; Lawrence Abu Hamdan; Layth Kareem; Mai Nguyễn-Long; Maithu Bùi; Marta Popivoda/Ana Vujanović; Mathieu Pernot; Mayuri Chari; Mila Turajlić; Mónica de Miranda; Moses März; Myriam El Haïk; Ngô Thành Bắc; Nil Yalter; Noel W Anderson; Olivier Marboeuf; Omer Fast; PEROU – Pôle d’Exploration des Ressources Urbaines; Prabhakar Kamble; Praneet Soi; Raed Mutar; Sajjad Abbas; Sammy Baloji; Simone Fattal; Susan Schuppli; Susana Pilar; Sven Johne; Taloi Havini; Tammy Nguyen; Taysir Batniji; Tejswini Narayan Sonawane; Temitayo Ogunbiyi; The School of Mutants (Boris Raux, Hamedine Kane, Lou Mo, Stéphane Verlet Bottéro, Valérie Osouf); Thùy-Hân Nguyễn-Chí; Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn; Uriel Orlow; Yuyan Wang; Zach Blas; Zuzanna Hertzberg.

See more about the works of the 70 artists and artist collectives here.

Bracha L. Ettinger, Radicants Curatorial Cooperative, Paris, France, 2022.

May 24 - July 29, 2022

How does one start to talk about an artist whose work contests the very concept of the beginning? For the painter, writer, and psychoanalyst Bracha L. Ettinger the notion of origin—a singular, temporally, and geographically bounded event—needs to be interrogated. Every subject's "origin" consists of an accumulation of the material, political, and emotional parts of a life lived in time: ashes, bodily arousal, and other transgenerational transmissions.

Ettinger formulated this matrix(ial) understanding of origin as a therapeutic modality and philosophy, that is evident in Ettinger's artistic work as a form of ordering and understanding. This exhibition, Ettinger’s first solo show in Paris in over 22 years, includes oil paintings from several series that embody matrixial connectivity: Eurydice, Eros, Pieta, and others. They cross, co-emerge, reappear, and trans-present in one another. The show also includes drawings and notebooks.

Read the full press release here.

Exhibition wall text is available here.

See the exhibition catalogue here.

Installation views are courtesy of Radicants Curatorial Cooperative, Paris.

In place of a missing place, American University Museum, Katzen Arts Center, Washington, D.C.

January 29 – April 8, 2022

In place of a missing place takes on a visual language of double meaning, from which critical views of Israeli state policies emerge. Abstracted images of war and trauma were traditionally interpreted as references to the horrors of the Holocaust and the early wars of the Israeli state. This show offers a broader and more complex consideration of these images.

Landscape painting is European in its origins. Landscapes helped construct national identities through imperial iconography, build nationalist sentiment, and create and reproduce ethnic and racial stereotypes. Never a mere depiction of the land “as it is” or in its natural state, landscapes traffic in amnesia, erasure, and historical revision.

In place of a missing place re-reads this body of work as a series of coded reflections and critiques of state policies: violence against refugee Arab populations, the colonialist nature of land management policies, and the ongoing attempts to erase traces of Palestinian presence in land, agriculture, and the written and visual record.

The imagery in this exhibition, presented chronologically, registers a break with foundational beliefs and myths through artistic processes of cracking, erasing, breaking, or even suggesting complete abandonment.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue.

Participating artists: Michal Baror, Yael Bartana, Orit Ben Shitrit, Naftali Bezem, Aika Brown, Miriam Cabessa, Jacob El Hanani, Pinchas Cohen Gan, Ori Gersht, Moshe Gershuni, Michal Helfman, Marcel Janco, Shai Kremer, Yehiel Krize, Roi Kuper, Sigalit Landau, Dana Levy, Avshalom Okashi, Gilad Ophir, Ilana Salama Ortar, Gilad Ratman, Michal Rovner, Naomi Safran-Hon, Eldad Shaaltiel, Tal Shochat, Yohanan Simon, Jacob Steinhardt, Lihi Turjeman, Micha Ullman, Gal Weinstein, Yaacov Wexler, Amon Yariv, and Ronit Yeda'ya.

Installation views by Greg Staley. Courtsey of the American University Museum.

Exhibition catalogue is available here.

Lihi Turjeman, Unearth, Quartz Studio, Turin.

February 10—April 17, 2021

Unearth is the first solo show in Italy by artist Lihi Turjeman, curated by Noam Segal. For the site-specific exhibition at Quartz Studio, Turjeman creates a painting installation defined by a lust for the archaic, a desire that signals a crisis attitude toward the culture of the present. Turjeman started this body of work with a series of small pseudo-scientific paintings, titled We Are Dealing With Very Dangerous Materials (2020), which depicts gloved hands and amorphous shapes made with sand, that encourage a scrutinizing gaze. Earthen Pots (2020) and Holding Pattern (2020) depict a multitude of empty clay amphorae gathered together over a black backdrop that is typically identified with archaeological research and laboratory work.

Images are courtesy of the artist and Quartz Studio.

AURORA Biennial 2020-21: Afterwards Was Already Before

November 2020 -

The title and theme of the 2020–21 Biennial, ‘Afterwards was already before,’ addresses the timely politics of the loop, environmental phases, and the cycles that organize our lives. The heightened clash between the tightly dense structure of technology and the unpredictability of the natural world is central to works of various mediums. Cross-network collaborations took place between the invited artists and a number of local community groups, sites, and individuals dedicated to arts and education.

Curated by Noam Segal; Associate curators: Tamara Johnson and Trey Burns.

Participating artists to date: Marina Rosenfeld and Jan Tichy (see below for project descriptions).

**Full list of participating artists below.

Marina Rosenfeld, Ssalute, 2020: The 2020–21 AURORA Biennial opened with the world-premiere of Ssalute, a new work by Marina Rosenfeld. Comprised of a drive-through sound installation and performance occupying the upper floors of a parking garage in downtown Dallas and a large-scale public billboard, Rosenfeld’s new work was oriented around the spectator as a driver or passenger, enclosed in the protective skin of their vehicle. Each visitor’s entry into the work was met by an invitation of sorts—into publicness and mutual presence—in the form of a personal salute offered by a live trumpet player, a role shared by notable Dallas-based musicians Raquel Samayoa, Chris Doty, and Freddie Jones. Read more about the project here.

Jan Tichy, Remote Pyramids, 2020 - 2021: Following the curator's invitation, Jan Tichy came to Dallas on the eve of the COVID pandemic in March 2019 searching for a community response to the recent decision by Governor Abbott to take Texas out of the Federal Refugee Resettlement Program. For the project, Tichy connected a group of resettled refugee teenagers from the Vickery Meadow neighborhood in Dallas with a group of teenagers with their own migration experiences from the Oak Cliff neighborhood, through a creative dialogue. Remote Pyramids began in 2020, when Tichy developed collaborative relationships with Dallas-based educators, activists, artists and cultural practitioners to launch the Remote AURORA Summer Art Workshop. Responding to the events of early summer, including the killing of George Floyd as well as the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the educators and participating young artists discussed topics surrounding public space, resistance and participation. Each student questioned history and the way it’s celebrated, and they proposed new monuments for public spaces in Dallas that are owned by and reflect their surrounding communities.

January 2021 marks the debut of the resulting artworks by Tichy and six young artists (Alexander Lopez, Andrez Rivas, Judy Kharchou, Josefat Delgado, Sumaya Sakhi, and Sara Yassoumali). The project’s digital space, remotepyramids.org, launched, and the young artists’ public interventions will be on view in their own neighborhoods. Furthermore, a video projection by Tichy connecting with the young artists’ artworks and the Remote Pyramids website will be on view at Dallas City Hall, initiating dialogue and creating a place to share the needs of the present. The Dallas City Hall was selected by AURORA Biennial as the primary canvas for the project. I.M.Pei’s city hall design broke with the expected traditions of city hall architecture and challenged assumptions about what a civic symbol should be. The inverted and remote pyramid suggests a conceptual framework to guide the young participants through a series of workshops, dialogues and meetings in this project. Read more about the project here.

Read more about the AURORA Biennial 2020 here.

**Ode to a never playing orchestra:
The original AURORA Biennial 2020-21 exhibition was intended to take the audience on a coiled journey through a place where we all could belong. To celebrate our shared life and interspecies’ presence, the event was imagined to live and die as a massive yet precarious orchestra of sound installations, singing choirs, performances, and movement occurrences. Focused on the coincidence of live bodies and species with new media and technology, AURORA 2020 will collapse the digital and live art as one single ensemble.

Agnieszka Polska
Emilija Škarnulytė
Anri Sala
Ari Benjamin and different local Dallas choirs
Alicia Eggert
Christian Cruz
Cry Havoc Theater Company
David Levine
Deville Cohen
James Richards and Leslie Thornton
Becca Albee
James Allister Sprang
Alisa Baremboym
Alice Channer
James Talambas
Maria Hassabi
Marina Rosenfeld
Pope.L
Salome Asega
Maya Stovall
Hayden Dunham
Morehshin Allahyari
Virginia Lee Montgomery
Tal Angelstein
Aviva Silverman
Jan Tichy
Seung-Min Lee
Dallas Black Dance Theater

Sick Fireflies and Lightnings in Jars at the Petach Tikva Museum

August 1–December 28, 2019

The range of gazes and angles emerging from the random collections featured in the exhibition make it possible to observe common spheres of life, thereby exposing something about the modes of evaluation and hierarchy-making that structure our gaze. Just as a sick firefly may regain its glow, so a captive gaze, automatic judgment, or a prejudice may dissolve as it is exposed to the diverse possibilities embodied in multiplicity. The small, unique collections showcased in the current exhibition introduce a multiplicity of perspectives to the spectator, spanning diverse fields.

Participating artists: Anna Lundh, Céline Condorelli, G/host: Art Inspired by Works from the Levin Collection of Israeli Art, Gabriel Kuri, Hamody Gannam, Oriol Vilanova and Ruth Patir.

Images are courtesy of the Petach Tikva Museum.

Press release available here.

Jesper Just, Interpassivities at BAM Next Wave Festival, 2018

November 15–17, 2018

Danish artist and filmmaker Jesper Just, in collaboration with Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, charts the fractured, ever-changing topography of modern experience in this shape-shifting ballet. Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ fantasy of an immense map constructed on a one-to-one scale, Interpassivities immerses participants in a life-size no-man’s land. A self-triggering music machine communicates contrapuntally with towering video projections, while groups of laborers in pedestrian clothing and dancers pinball around the space, intermingling with audience members.

Images are courtesy of Perrotin, and Galleri Nicolai Wallner, from Jesper Just’s Interpassivities, 2017, with The Royal Danish Ballet.

See catalogue here.

Pope.L, One Thing After Another, La Panacée, MOCO Montpellier Contemporain

Co-curated with Nicolas Bourriaud

June 6—August 26, 2018

One Thing After Another is Pope.L’s first major solo museum show in France. Pope.L’s practice often focuses on the ambiguous but productive spaces inherent in differences in language, class, race, and gender to create works that simultaneously enlist, mock, and rewrite convention. The artist’s site-specific installation changes and develops throughout the duration of the show. An accompanying performance, made in collaboration with the Graduate School of Fine Arts Montpellier Contemporary, took place in Montpelier during the exhibition as well.

Images are courtesy of La Panacée, MOCO Montpellier Contemporain.

See exhibition catalogue here.

Hayley Silverman, Yom Asal Yom Basal at Sommer Contemporary Art

May 30–August 15, 2018

Yom Asal Yom Basal displays two radios that are connected by an umbilical cord, re-routing the radio frequencies they receive, broadcasting directly into the speaker of the second device. Silverman echoes the output of the political administration in Palestine/Israel in a manner that undermines the territory’s physical political boundaries. The frequencies emit out of singular glass objects that have been commissioned for the show.

Photos by Liat Elbling.

Press release is available here.

The Enemy of My Enemy, a project by Neïl Beloufa at Palais de Tokyo

Co-curated with Guillaume Désanges, Marilou Thiébault

February 16–May 13, 2018

The Enemy of My Enemy represents a chaotic and fragmented vision of the ways in which history is written and in which power is legitimized in contemporary life. Drawing inspiration from official communication, memorials, museums of war, and political propaganda as well as contemporary events, advertising, and video games, the exhibition explores the interchangeability of rhetoric strategies and discourses. Works of art, documents, images, artifacts, reproductions and objects are constantly moved around by programmed robotic elements, allowing for a constant reappraisal of possible associations, perspectives, and meanings.

Participating artists: Ellen Cantor, Thomas Hirschorn, Hito Steyerl, Pope.L, Sigmar Polke, Katja Novitskova, Camille Blatrix, Anahi Alviso-Marino, Barbara Bloom, Gregoire Beil, Johannes Büttner, Colectivo Acciones de Arte, Grégoire Chamayou, Gustave Courbet, Christian Courrèges, Louis-Auguste Déchelette, Eversim (France), Jean-Luc Godard, ECPAD - Établissement de Communication et de Production Audiovisuelle de la Défense (Ivry-sur-Seine), Massimo Grimaldi, Holy Defense Museum (Téhéran, Iran), Alfred Janniot, Jon Kessler, Elizabeth Lennard, Vann Nath, National Army Museum (Londres, Royaume-Uni), Pablo Picasso, Sigmar Polke, Joseph Tchaïkov, and more.

Images are courtesy of the artist and Balice Hertling Gallery (Paris); photos by Aurélien Mole © ADAGP Paris, 2018.

Exhibition text is available here.

Lihi Turjeman, Center of Gravity at Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv

September 8–November 5, 2016

Lihi Turjeman exhibits mainly large-scale paintings. Most of the works revolve around locations that hold great importance to the national and religious narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian land, centering on a massive floor piece, which gives the show its title (Center of Gravity, 2016). The images of Rosh Hanikra grottoes, the Dome of the Rock and Mount Nebo, all framed by the macro view of Earth itself, signal the way these locations are arbitrarily charged with political meanings. They also point to the absurdity of trying to politicize abstract spaces with national borders and religious narratives, which foster oppressive power structures.

Images are courtesy of the artist.

Press release is available here.

Exhibition text is available here (click here for Hebrew version).

Walter Benjamin: Exilic Archives at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art

Co-curated with Raphael Zagury-Orly

November 4, 2015–February 6, 2016

Exilic Archives presents nearly 200 items selected from the archive of Walter Benjamin, one of the twentieth century’s most prominent philosophers and cultural critics. Manuscripts, notes, letters, photographs, and related ephemera are showcased together with works of art that expand on the texts’ subject matter. The exhibition is held with the collaboration of the Walter Benjamin Archive at the Akademie Der Kunste, Berlin, among others.

Participating artists: Leonor Antunes, Uri Aran, Avner Ben Gal, Yona Friedman, Dor Guez, Paul Klee, Sarah Ortmeyer, Eli Petel, Sigal Primor, Haim Steinbach, Micha Ullman, Yonatan Vinitsky, and Shahar Yahalom.

Images are courtesy of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

Exhibition catalogue is available here.

Mishkan by Sharon Glazberg at Ein Harod Museum of Art

Co-curated with Dr. Galia Bar Or

June–September 2015

Sharon Glazberg’s exhibition changed its form throughout the three months it was on display, turning into a studio, a research workshop, a forum for meetings, and a display stage. The starting point for the exhibition was the placing of Ytong blocks into the museum space, which contained memory-conducting objects that had been given to the artist by members and children in Ein Harod Kibbutz. Mishkan partakes in a complex history of community-building. In the process, it takes apart, builds, and overturns parallel narratives by emphasizing the dialectical relationship between private and collective memory.

Images are courtesy of the artist.

Exhibition text is available here.

The Missing Image: The Blue Blind Spot at the Photography Department in Bezalel Academy of Art, Jerusalem

May 19—June 9, 2015

In the 2014–2015 academic year, the Photography Department at the Bezalel Academy of Art addressed the theme of the “missing image” in a series of workshops, conferences, seminars, and exhibitions in the department’s photography gallery. Both students and faculty showed growing sensitivity to the local contexts in the Middle East and explored perspectives that follow the “missing image.” This set of programs delved into the system of historical, political, and aesthetic expressions that are imprinted on photographic images, and that allow photographs to leave traces of perspectives that ordinarily are undocumented and silenced.

Participating artists in The Blue Blind Spot: Yael Burstein, Arnon Rabin, Zamir Shatz, Alphonse Burtillon, Ariella Azoulay, Deganit Berest, Assaf Shaham, NASA, and Genetic founds (private collection).

Images are courtesy of Bezalel Academy of Art.

Exhibition text is available here.

Anri Sala: No Names No Title in the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv Museum of Art

December 20, 2014–March 21, 2015

No Names No Title is the first solo exhibition in Israel for Anri Sala (born in Tirana, Albania, 1974). Working within a wide range of media—video installation, sculpture, performance, and sound—Sala uses ideas and narrative to explore non-verbal modes of expression. Through the use of sound and moving images, the artist questions historical ruptures and the failures of language. The exhibition presents, among others, two new works that have been commissioned for this particular show.

Photos by Elad Sarig.

See the conversation between artist Anri Sala and curator Noam Segal here.

Exhibition catalogue is available here.

Informal Forms at Aran Cravey Gallery, LA

September 13–November 1, 2014

For his proposed film La guerre, Yves Klein declares color the victor in the historically entrenched debate over the supremacy of line vs. color. Playing the role of the villain, line is the oppressive force that imprisons color’s vitality. Nevertheless, color trumps line in its purity. Informal Forms draws a parallel between Klein’s vision of color as the mercurial maverick and the boundary-breaking vigor of the abstract form.

Participating artists: Ulla von Brandenburg, Karl Haendel, Vlatka Horvat, Nahum Tevet, Jan Tichy, Shahar Yahalom, and Guy Yanai.

Images are courtesy of Aran Cravey Gallery.

Press release available here.

Sigal Primor, 56 Levanda at Chelouche Gallery for Contemporary Art

September–October 2014

56 Levanda presents a sculptural environment layered with sound. At the center of the gallery lies a broken balcony—an exact copy of a section of the floor at the Ship House on 56 Levanda Street, which overlooks La Guardia junction at the northeast corner of Tel Aviv’s Neve Sha’anan neighborhood. The building is considered one of the 4,000 International Style Bauhaus houses built in the city. While wallowing in the false aspiration of the Bauhaus, the piece evokes the silencing of the voices of the southern neighborhoods, which is amplified into a multiplicity of human and non-human sounds as the reworked Stockhausen score.

Images are courtesy of Chelouche Gallery.

Exhibition catalogue is available here.

See Under: Actor at the Petach Tikva Museum

October 17, 2013–January 4, 2014

The exhibition See Under: Actor fans out the concept of “actor”—etymologically, the one who interprets—across several axes of reference, including agency of objects; modes of acting and becoming; and modes of engagement and participation.

Participating artists: Boaz Arad, Emily Wardill, Jean-Luc Godard, Liz Magic Laser, Nathaniel Mellors, Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz, Roiy Nitzan, Ruth Patir and Sharon Hayes.

Images are courtesy of the Petach Tikva Museum.

Exhibition text is available here.

Einat Amir, Our Best Intentions at Performa ‘13

November 12–23, 2013

Our Best Intentions, a participatory performance series and video installation by artist Einat Amir, was co-commissioned by Artis and Performa for Performa 13. The performance was comprised of nine interactive evenings and a four-channel video installation. The gallery was transformed into four domestic settings—a living room, bedroom, study, and dining room—which served as the setting for unexpected social engagement and for the exploration of intimate personal narratives. The work challenges the viewer to test their own personal boundaries and question societal norms.

See trailer here.

More information available here.

Our Best Intentions was also shown at the Petach Tikva Museum in Israel, October 2013–January 2014. See more here.

Shachar Freddy Kislev, Baldy Heights at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art

May 11–August 3, 2013

Shachar Freddy Kislev’s first museum solo exhibition invites the viewer into a fantastic world spanning the kingdoms of animals, plants, and inanimate objects. A microcosm in which relationships between humans, animals, and plants have changed is displayed. In this fictional environment, creatures live in an unusual habitat, in which definitions of functionality have been altered and the separation between animals, plants, and objects have become blurred and fluid.

The exhibition includes four works in various mediums and materials, including animatronics, natural and synthetic materials, and traditional art formats.

Images are courtesy of the artist.

Photos by Yael Engelhart.

Exhibition catalogue is available here.

Lihi Turjeman, White Mule at Rothschild 69 

January 31–March 7, 2013

Lihi Turjeman is a painter who works in the Rationalism tradition, which addresses the chasm between the scientific and the fortuitous, and who works tirelessly to subject her paintings to mathematical rules and calculations. Turjeman worked for three years in a space that used to be a school and was scheduled to be demolished in order to make room for a new residential tower. The artist spread huge canvasses throughout each and every one of the spaces in the building and recorded the encroaching, conquering, and non-eradicable elements.

Images are courtesy of the artist.

Exhibition text is available here.

Guy Yanai, Battle, Therapy, Living Room, Velan Centro d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin

April 11–June 1, 2013

Battle, Therapy, Living Room is Guy Yanai’s first solo exhibition in Italy, made in collaboration with the nonprofit art space Rothschild 69, Tel Aviv. Yanai’s adaptation of The Battle of San Romano, a triptych painting by Paolo Uccello (1432), is at the center of the exhibition, which addresses the day-to-day atheist struggle in contemporary society. Yanai deals with spatial experiences, and creates an external, eerie scrutiny of his most intimate spaces, yet acts as a stranger to them. The artist’s abstractions turn the domestic space into a battlefield over a living space.

Images are courtesy of Velan Centro d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin.

Press release is available here.

More from the exhibition catalogue is available here.

This exhibition was also shown at Rothschild 69, Tel Aviv, November 2012. See more here.

Ulla Von Brandenburg, Following the Signs at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art

January 26–April 20, 2013

Ulla von Brandenburg’s works are concerned with various modes of theatricality. She works in a range of mediums, including installation art, performance art, theater, painting, video, set design, playwriting, opera, and poetry. Her sources of inspiration include baroque theater, classical Greek theater, epic theater, cinematic manipulations, and more. This is her first solo show in Israel.

Images are courtesy of the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art.

Exhibition text is available here.

From Singular to Multitude, Abstraction as Resistance at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago

Digital exhibition from October 2012

This exhibition examines photographs of human expressions, and gestures, and considers their abstraction. As proposed by Antonio Negri in his book Art and Multitude, a possible strategy for resisting the market forces of neoliberalism can be found in abstraction and in bio-political activity. The show seeks to shed light on the commodification of human expression and its suggested gravitation towards abstraction.

The works were displayed on digital screens, while fading in and out every thirty seconds.

Exhibition text is available here.

Photo credits: 

1. #2964 Laboratory; Artist: Lynne Cohen; Date: n.d.; Medium: Gelatin Silver Print; Dimensions: 43 ¾ in x 50 ½ in.; Credit Line: Museum purchase.

2. Liberty Head, from the "Expeditions" series; Artist: Ruth Thorne-Thomsen; Date: 1978 (portfolio 1976-1984); Medium: Gelatin Silver Print; Dimensions: image: 3 ½ in x 4 ½ in; paper: 4 in x 5 in; Credit Line: Museum purchase.

3. Torn Smiles, from the "Recycled Realities" series; Artist: Tom Young; Date: c. 1998; Medium: Inkjet print; Dimensions: 16x20 inches; Credit Line: Gift of Jeanne L. and Richard S. Press.

    

Miriam Cabessa, Performance, a solo exhibition at Rothschild 69

January 4–14, 2012

Miriam Cabessa draws with housewares that have been expropriated from their original usage: irons, floor mops, trash cans, and rags become a paintbrush in her hands. At Rothschild 69, Cabessa paints with a mop and a rag—her performance is a consideration of feminist theory. She produces a three-dimensional object that is composed of her intertwined body, absorbed Masonite, and her work tools. Cabessa’s slow movement over the canvas produces an image and then deletes it, as repeated multiple times. The final product, is the result of these halts and pauses.

Images are courtesy of the artist.

Press release is available here.

Ofri Cnaani, The Sota Project, a solo exhibition at Rothschild 69 

Opening reception: June 26, 2011

The Sota Project is a large-scale 360-degree video installation that reenacts a controversial story from the biblical Talmud. It is a story that follows an “adulterous” woman who is put on trial by her suspecting husband while her sister helps her fight for her life. For this controversial story that highlights gay identity, the artist created a complicated and ambitious installation that exposes the inherent tensions of the Talmudic text’s sota ritual, which was subject to rabbinic censorship.

Betrayal in Three Acts, a one-day seminar, took place in conjunction with The Sota Project. The seminar began with a special lecture-performance by the artist, followed by three sessions, discussing theoretical themes from the project and beyond.

A trailer for the exhibition is available here.

Images are courtesy of the artist.

Exhibition catalogue is available here.

A Working Machine Must Not Want to Play the Fiddle, a project by Guy Bar Amotz at Rothschild 69

April 14–June 2, 2011

A Working Machine Must Not Want to Play the Fiddle is a performance that undermines conventional definitions of exhibition spaces, of theater and performance. It combines sculpture, sound, robotics, theatrical components, and technological elements. The piece is based on the play RUR, by Karel Čapek, which introduced the word Robot. The performance takes place in a bohemian bar that hosts a number of robotic talking heads created by the artist. Audience members take an active role in the space, and are welcomed to sit at the bar alongside the “actors” and discuss ideas stemming from the concept of “ready-made” and art.

Images are courtesy of the artist.

Photos by Ben Harris.

Press release is available here.

Exhibition catalogue is available here (click here for Hebrew version).

Neo-Barbarism at Rothschild 69

Co-curated with Naomi Aviv

December 1, 2010–January 15, 2011

Neo-Barbarism, which is based on the video works and installations of seventeen Israeli artists, seeks to turn the spotlight on an artistic movement that has gained a presence in Israel over the last decade. The neo-barbarian artist seeks an escape route, a point of departure from the political and diplomatic dead end, as well as a refuge from the violent atmosphere of stagnation and indifference that permeates Israeli society and the occupation of the Palestinian territories.

“Contemporary Issues in Video Art” was a one-day conference that took place leading up to the exhibition. 

The show was jointly commissioned by Rothschild 69 and the New Israeli Foundation for Cinema and Television.

Participating artists: Keren Cytter, Avner ben Gal, Lior Shvil, Maya Zack, Gal Weinstein, Gilad Ratman, Ruti Sela, Sharon Balaben, Lior Waterman, Roee Rosen, Etti Visaltir, Beni Efrat, and Sharif Waked.

Images are courtesy of Rothschild 69.

Press release is available here.

Exhibition catalogue is available here (click here for Hebrew version).