Shelf Life

Michal Heiman

The concepts "archive" and "collection" form the underlying basis of Michal Heiman's multilayered works. Her studio constitutes an archive filled with boxes, envelopes, drawers, closets and shelves, which contain photographs taken by her and photographs from family albums, as well as documents, films, diaries, books, clinical studies and psychoanalytic texts. A fundamental aspect of Heiman's work concerns the affinity between psychic reality and between photography, its origins, various manifestations and repercussions. She is consistently interested in the nature of the human psyche and in expanding the boundaries of art. As part of her research, she has gathered boxes containing psychological projection tests used by psychoanalysts, such as the Thematic Apperception Test. These boxes contain a variety of images that enable the patient to give expression to a wide range of associations, based on the assumption that he is unconsciously projecting his emotions and urges onto the images by sharing a confession, constructing a narrative or offering an interpretation. Based on such tests, Heiman created her own box: Michal Heiman Test No. 1 (M.H.T.) (1997); the images it contains are related to the Israeli geopolitical sphere, and were culled from family albums, public archives and books. They were presented to visitors at Documenta X in Kassel, Germany (1997), in the format of a personal interview conducted by "testers." A selection from the documentation of these "tests" is presented here for the first time. For Michal Heiman Test No. 2 (M.H.T.): Test for Women (1998), the artist created an additional box with photographs of her former mother-in-law, who would inadvertently pose for photographs against backgrounds that matched her outfits. The photographs are reminiscent of Cindy Sherman's staged works, in which the artist impersonated different women in order to analyze female stereotypes. Here, however, the enactment of such stereotypes is not consciously planned. For this test female visitors to the exhibition space were asked to lie down on a couche and discuss some of the images in this box. A display cabinet contains a collection of projection tests that are usually kept in analysts' clinics, and which Heiman has accumulated over the years.

Born in Tel Aviv, 1954; lives and works in Tel Aviv