Curator: Ilana Tenenbaum
The video installation Death Bed, which was created for the Emergency Exit exhibition space, is a paraphrase on moments of struggle between well known figures from Greek mythology: Perseus and Medusa, Leda and the Swan, Hercules and the Lion, as well as Artemis, Aceton and his three dogs. The relationship between the protagonist and the monster/animal in each of these stories repeatedly describes a cruel cycle of sex, violence and death.
The installation is composed of two projections on round Plexiglass screens that rotate in opposite directions. Both projections were filmed from above, and are screened directly onto the surface in a manner reminiscent of classical Greek pottery paintings. The black and red palette of the stain-like expanses is similarly reminiscent of Greek pottery. The restricted use of naturalistic details underscores the dramatic quality of each scene.
Filmed in New York, these scenes recall images from the world of dance-theater. The protagonists are depicted in various poses and sequences of slow motion, wearing costumes and carrying their characteristic attributes. One projection depicts the moment in which each of the figures is vanquished or dies; the second projection depicts the bodies piled up in a mass grave, while their attributes are cast into a circle of light. The process of disintegration and death in each scene thus takes place on both a narrative and a formal level.
The tragic cycle of desire and death in these stories is often related to the power of the gaze. One may perceive the discs as a pair of gigantic eyes, which reconstruct the "forbidden gaze" by "staring" at the viewer. This gaze heralds the sequence in which each hero covets, rapes or kills, and is consequently punished for his hubris. Finally, the figures all succumb to the cyclical formal logic of the work, and are "blended" into a continuum of images.
The viewer's focus on the relationship between the two screens moving in opposite directions creates a powerful visual experience. With the advent of each dramatic climax, the circular disc rotates faster and faster. Whirling backwards and forwards, it flashes visual fragments in a scratch technique that is paralleled by the accompanying soundtrack. The characters vanish off the screen in a dreamlike manner, like an enchanted phantasmagoria.
This installation is related to Ofri Cnaani's earlier works, and to her continual preoccupation with the ordering of the individual in relation to social codes. Her works repeatedly examine figures situated within a disciplined and controlled sphere. In the current installation, Cnaani has developed a means of expression that includes narrative elements; carefully staged and clearly defined characters; and reciprocal formal relations between the projections. This installation's narrative-mythological dimension points to the entrapment of the protagonists within fixed patterns of dominator and dominated, victim and perpetrator. By means of Ofri Cnaani's unique language, this work "gazes" at the viewer in a visually powerful manner.