Visual Arts
Orit Ishay in “Oasis Shalvata”, a New Solo Exhibition
A site-specific solo exhibition with several new video-art works.
Orit Ishay's practice constantly moves between these contrasts of pretty and terrible, sterile-clean and affecting, idyllic and defective, calm and disturbing. Even if there is drama in her work, it's always under the surface, unseen, deluding the viewer.
The center of "Peaceful Oasis," her new exhibition at the Gallery in Be'eri, features her breathtaking video work, "Smoke in the Desert." It is breathtaking because of the human soundtrack that tells the true story of a Yom Kippur warfighter who deals with a chilling moral dilemma, refusing a direct order while taking part in the most humane act there is.
It is also breathtaking, photographically speaking. It is mainly shot from the bird/drone's eye view, slow and lingering; it is almost a still photo, beautiful and pastoral, while disturbing, abandoned, empty, wild, and militaristic.
The humane story is told against the backdrop of the region's landscapes laden with the local history of a bloody conflict: sparse groves of parched Eucalyptus trees, Negev terrains seeming detached from reality because they are not agricultural fields, nor a desert or a settlement. It is dispersed with old British-era sulfur mines that, from above, appear like a hallucinatory lunar landscape: relics of an abandoned sulfur factory, relics of British military buildings and a Zionist settlement, a water tower, a grooved concrete road, and dozens of ammunition sites, walls, and dugouts
that look, from an overview, like relics of an ancient civilization or a battlefield, lined up in rows within the wheat fields.
The choice of the name - "Shalvata" (an Israeli psychiatric hospital whose name means "Tranquility") - throws us from peace and calmness to madness and back again.
It is a story of humaneness and humanity, faith in the person standing before you. It's a story that brings hope, but is there still hope for a life of sanity, or has hatred already extinguished any such glimmer?
Orit Ishay flirts with this story, raising feelings questions.
- Dr. Ziva Jelin
The opening will be held on 6th May 2023, from 11:00-14:00. The exhibition is accompanied by a printed catalog
curated by Dr. Ziva Jelin.
The center of "Peaceful Oasis," her new exhibition at the Gallery in Be'eri, features her breathtaking video work, "Smoke in the Desert." It is breathtaking because of the human soundtrack that tells the true story of a Yom Kippur warfighter who deals with a chilling moral dilemma, refusing a direct order while taking part in the most humane act there is.
It is also breathtaking, photographically speaking. It is mainly shot from the bird/drone's eye view, slow and lingering; it is almost a still photo, beautiful and pastoral, while disturbing, abandoned, empty, wild, and militaristic.
The humane story is told against the backdrop of the region's landscapes laden with the local history of a bloody conflict: sparse groves of parched Eucalyptus trees, Negev terrains seeming detached from reality because they are not agricultural fields, nor a desert or a settlement. It is dispersed with old British-era sulfur mines that, from above, appear like a hallucinatory lunar landscape: relics of an abandoned sulfur factory, relics of British military buildings and a Zionist settlement, a water tower, a grooved concrete road, and dozens of ammunition sites, walls, and dugouts
that look, from an overview, like relics of an ancient civilization or a battlefield, lined up in rows within the wheat fields.
The choice of the name - "Shalvata" (an Israeli psychiatric hospital whose name means "Tranquility") - throws us from peace and calmness to madness and back again.
It is a story of humaneness and humanity, faith in the person standing before you. It's a story that brings hope, but is there still hope for a life of sanity, or has hatred already extinguished any such glimmer?
Orit Ishay flirts with this story, raising feelings questions.
- Dr. Ziva Jelin
The opening will be held on 6th May 2023, from 11:00-14:00. The exhibition is accompanied by a printed catalog
curated by Dr. Ziva Jelin.
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Location
Be'eri Gallery
Kibbutz Be'eri, Israel
Date and time
through
Times in UTC+3
Add To Calendar
Location
Be'eri Gallery
Kibbutz Be'eri, Israel