Curated by Meital Raz at Galleria Engel, the exhibition features five female artists: Michal Yaniv, Orly Hummel, Diti Kapuano, Foma<3, and Michal Ronen. The exhibition will run from 31/07 to 6/09.
The artists weave a web of links between the body, sexuality and violence. Their heroines exist inside a cult ritual in the space amid the profane and the pure, between the voyeuristic and the intimate. Each one of them toys with crossing the fine line separating "normal" adult sexuality and “perverted” childish sexuality – between "children's games'" and "grown-ups' games".
The leitmotiv linking the works of the five artists is the tight connection they create between the sexual body and the dead body, a paradoxical equation by its nature, since, on the one hand, feminism has fought, from its inception, against the concept that identifies the female body as an object of disgust and danger, a hole in which death and destruction lie ahead. On the other hand, dealing with sexuality through death and violence by which it is accompanied, is a form of self exploration, since every identity is shaped by a violent struggle. The wish to cause pain or to experience it endeavors to break the barriers and at the same time to find them.
The exhibition's title paraphrases one of the most important exhibitions in recent decades, which has become a landmark in the history of feminist art. The exhibition took place in New York in 1994 and featured dozens of female artists (as well as a number of male artists), whose blunt subversion against the manners in which women were represented earned them the nickname "bad girls".
The exhibition investigates – fifteen years after the event – the impact of these spiritual mothers on the five artists, and at the same time their relevance at a period where feminism seems to have reached a saturation point and is nowadays considered offensive, annoying and even unnecessary.
Without a doubt, the fear of confronting the feminist issue emerges throughout the entire exhibition, and it looks as if the artists display a blurred, confused and confusing view, oscillating between bottomless seriousness and wild satire on the bad reputation feminism has earned. There is no doubt that this view is characteristic of many female artists who shy away from dealing with the subject and abhor being labeled "feminist artists" or "women-creators".
Engel Gallery
26 Gordon St.
Tel: 03-5225637
Opening Hours: Sun-Thurs 10-20, Fri and holiday eves: 10-14
