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3/10/2007

Dead End

Columbia University School of the Arts, New York

Carla Bobadilla, Dana Levy and Lidia Sanvito

a project by Sara Serighelli

with works by Carla Bobadilla (Chile), Dana Levy (Israel) and Lidia Sanvito (Italy).

Dead End is a reflection on uneasiness originated by illegibility of things. The works and text in the show have a tension in common: the fear of not having deeply understood, of being in a system that is going towards short circuit, that pushes to find a way out a solution that might not exist. Though coming from very different cultural and artistic backgrounds, the artists express a common feeling, conveyed in the works through the difficulties of language, the limits of body and desire or through the repressive confrontation with a colonizing culture.

The film ‘No man’s language’ (40min., 2007) by Dana Levy (Israel, 1973) chronicles five years in the life of her step-grandfather, a cross-dressing holocaust survivor who over the span of 40 years created an international language, with its grammatical and phonetic rules, that only he speaks. This is a story of a Jew who doesn't stop wandering. Between places, wives, genders, languages.

Carla Bobadilla’s (Chile, 1976) work ‘Granny Smith’ (2007) refers to a type of an apple, which is cultivated in Chile to later be exported all over the world. It’s one of the most recognized products in foreign countries. The artist made three types of Chilean national flags using the green of the apple together with grey-black parts instead of its original colours red, blue and white, thus trying to provide the flag with a new identity. The photograph shows the act of peeling. In Chilean slang, the word “pelar”(to peel) means also a kind of defamation of another person.

Lidia Sanvito (Italy, 1970), builds an environmental installation that people can directly experience. ‘Anidride’(2004-2007) is made of hundreds of white paper bags that hang from the ceiling and thickly cover it. The different heights from the floor allow people to place their faces into the paper bags without difficulty. Beyond their common use, paper bags are actually simple instruments to re-balance oxygen and carbon dioxide (Anidride in italian) situations of anxiety and panic. When people suffer of these disturbs, their breath quickens, changing the ratio between the two elements.

Sara Serighelli’s text that accompanies the show should be intended as a backbone on which the project is organized; actually, it is not a critical text but rather an independent work functional to the idea of tight spot, rubbing, dead end precisely, which is the inner feeling shared by the artists.

Thanks to: Dinamo Milano, Tomas Vu-Daniel, Angelo Colombo/LAB-laboratorioartibovisa Milano, Fabio Carboni and Bruno Stucchi/Die Schachtel Milano, Consulate General of Israel in New York O’artoteca Milano, Matthias Finkentey, Katharina Müller, Giulia Formenti, Lavinia Tonetti, Keri Neff, Linda Fregni Nagler.

Dana Levy’s ‘No Man’s Language’ is supported by CCA The Fund for Video-Art and Experimental Cinema in Israel. Photography by Roni Berkovich, Dana Levy, Raymond Flynn, Racheli Rusinik, Ziv Shiloach. Original Music: Joseph Levy

Columbia University School of the Arts
310 Dodge Hall MC 1803 - New York

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