Naomi Safran-Hon
dal 11/1/2013 al 16/2/2013
Segnalato da
11/1/2013
Naomi Safran-Hon
Galerie Brandt, Amsterdam
Makom: Chronicle of Absentees. Using cement and lace the artist is able to address both domestic spaces as well as brutal architectural structures, that shape the reality of our day-to-day life. An exploration of the tension between home and its destruction.
Makom is the Hebrew word for place. In the show Makom: Chronicle of Absentees Naomi explores the relationship between the place she grew up and its disputed histories, as well as the ties between private stories and the political forces that changed the landscape. Using cement and lace she is able to address both domestic spaces as well as brutal architectural structures, that shape the reality of our day-to-day life. The mixing of these materials allows Safran-Hon to explore the tension between home and its destruction.
Makom: Chronicle of Absentees includes three different series of work. The series Home Invasion is a body of work tackling directly the invasion of the political world, i.e. war and violence, into the private space of the home. In these pieces she photographs the homes of her family in Israel, and in the creative process she destroys them, using cement and lace as symbolic materials. Thus the material invades the pictorial space. Naomi cuts part of the original photo, usually windows, doorframes or light fixtures and replaces them with cement that was forced through lace. Although the photograph is absent in few pieces the relationship to an interior domestic space is enhanced by the use of window frames and the repetition of blue lace that echoes curtains and wallpaper.
The second series of smaller work titled Cast Lead, named after the Israeli Army military operation of 2008-9 in the Gaza Strip, uses another kind of imagery. All the images in this series were downloaded from newspaper sites on the Internet and depict the brutal invasion of the Gaza Strip.
Naomi on the third series: ‘Wadi Salib: Interior Wall (pink light switch)’: This piece stands as a link between the two major bodies of work in this show. In this piece instead of destroying the image I attempted to restore the space of a home that was left vacant by its original homeowners. In this series I use photographs I shot in my hometown, Haifa, of houses that were left behind in the war of 1948. I replace part of the dilapidated spaces with cement and lace, trying to patch up its history and retell the story of the absent homeowners.
Artist Bio:
Born in Oxford, England, in 1984 Safran-Hon grew up in Haifa, Israel. She received her BA Summa Cum Laude from Brandeis University, 2008, in Studio Art and Art History and an MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2010. Safran-Hon attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2012. She received the Young Artist Award from the Hecht Museum, University of Haifa. Safran-Hon exhibited in The Rear the first Herzliya Biennial of Contemporary Art 2007, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art
Opening: 12 January 2013
Galerie Brandt
Prinsengracht 799, Amsterdam
Hours: Thursday-Saturday 11.30 a.m.–5.30 p.m.
Sunday noon–5.00 p.m.
Free Admission