Israel - Is real?

On September 2009 I've been travelling around Israel.
My Israeli friends, who I used to live in London with, gave me hospitality in Tel Aviv.
In that period, the Biennal of Art called ArtTLV 09 was running in various places all around the city.
It is interesting to know that the organization for the event started in 2008, and at first the curators were the well-know Zdenka Badovinac and Viktor Misiano. Then, in December, Israel attacked the Gaza Strip. The two curators decided to keep their jobs only if the Israeli government would not be the sponsor of the Biennal. Unfortunately, there was not enough time to find private sponsors, so they gave up, leaving the task to a local curatorial team, that makes the event something less international.

I've seen quite a lot of interesting and challenging artworks there, but not so controversial and politically engaged as I expected.


The work by Shelly Federman was a big surprise. The 34-years-old artist from Israel made an installation on the beach of Tel Aviv (see above) that wanted to recreate the West Bank barrier in a public place dedicated to amusement and relaxation as a beach.
She says "I wanted to make the wall visible, and in doing so make people feel uncomfortable." The installation was filmed and the result is a short video in which turists used the sponge wedges as surfboards and lounge chairs (maybe the best thing to do with the real wall as well?).




Another work that I enjoyed was an installation by the Moroccan artist called Mounir Fatmi (nice website!) that I already knew from an artwork he presented to the 2007 Venice Biennale.

In the installation I saw in Tel Aviv, he used 1.500 VHS glued to the wall in order to represent the shape of a skyscraper skyline.
The work gives me a sense of drama and darkness, mixed with a bit of irony.

Mounir Fatmi, Skyline, 2007.