HigHligHts 2001-2011
MonicA BohM-Duchen, art critic The J Street Project (2002-5) byAmerican-born, British- domiciled artist Susan Hiller is the artwork that immediately comes to mind. The springboard for the work is a deceptively simple one: the disconcertingly widespread existence in contemporary Germany of street names (Judenstrasse, Judengasse, Judenhof etc.) evoking – in deeply ambiguous ways – that country’s vanished Jewish population. Comprising a wall installation of 303 apparently deadpan photographs of these street signs, a map of Germany and list of street locations, a book and a 67-minute video, the cunningly titled J Street Project is both thought-provoking and surprisingly moving, extremely specific yet disturbingly wide-ranging in its implications. First seen at the Timothy Taylor Gallery, London in 2005, Londoners had a chance to see it again this summer as part of Tate Britain’s Hiller retrospective.Aversion of the work is now in the permanent collections of the JewishMuseum, NewYork, and the LudwigMuseum, Cologne.
JuliAWeiner, Jewish Chronicle art critic My cultural highlight of the decade is the series of works by Israeli-American artist Michal Rovner entitled In Stone. In these works, Rovner projects images of tiny, anonymous people onto stones gathered in theMiddle East (and in related works onto pages in books), so that at first glance they appear to be ancient texts. The work is wonderfully powerful, bringing together the latest technologies with ancient stones and early references to
writing.Although I feel that these works suggest strongly the vitality of our ancient texts and their importance today, in an interview in 2007 Rovner stressed tome instead their universality. “It is not a Jewish theme, it is a human theme. It is about language. It is a basic element in survival. The desire and need to communicate.” Rovner is currently showing at the Louvre in Paris but has not had amajor exhibition in this country yet, something I hope to see in the near future.
AngelA levine, JR’s israel art correspondent Sigalit Landau’s DeadSee (2005) is surely the artwork that can represent Israeli art most truly in a decade dominated by video art. Not only is it a beautiful image and Landau an artist with an international reputation, but the work has powerful local connotations. Filmed in the area of Sodom, South ofMassada, it was one of five videos first exhibited in Landau’s Endless Solution installation at the TelAviv Museum. It depicts Landau’s naked body floating in the saturated salt waters of the Dead Sea, locked inside a spiral raft made from 500 corded watermelons. Suggestive of open wounds, some fruits are split open revealing red flesh. In a curative gesture, Landau’s hand reaches out against the direction of the turning raft to touch them. Overall, this is a stunning metaphor for the ability of living things to survive, and even heal themselves, in a hostile environment.
32 JeWish renAissAnce octoBer 2011
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