Participating Artists
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Untitled, 2006 (video still), single-screen video projection, 4:20 minutes, sound, courtesy of the artist
Erez Israeli
The two video works by Erez Israeli that are exhibited here allude to the Christian image of the Pieta, yet endow it with local meanings related to the death of soldiers, to sacrifice and to war. In this work, the artist's mother employs obsessive, pain-filled movements to pluck the feathers stuck with wax to her son's body. The monotonous act of plucking the feathers seems to indicate that the mother has come to terms with the son's death, yet refuses to part with him. In order to stay close to him, she prepares to assimilate his body back into her own body, into her womb. Israeli alludes in this work to two canonical myths - the myth of Icarus (as if after being pulled from the sea, his mother cleans his feathers) and the myth of the Sacrifice of Isaac; here, however, the mother offers her son to herself, thus denying God the sacrifice.
Born in Be'er Sheva, 1974; lives and works in Tel Aviv.
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