Interchange
Jafra Abu Zoulouf / Rachel Anyo / Yuval Atzili / Boaz Barkani / Basma Bader / Roni Ben Porat / Inbal Cohen Hamo / Dana Friedlander-Oren / Or Gross / Shir Handelsman / Eden Yilma
Curated by:
The Bush collective: Noga Or Yam, Faina Feigin, Shir Newman
31.10.2019 - 16.11.2019
Interchange
The exhibition Interchange is a collaborative project by the Bush collective for queer-feminist art. This is the fourth year the group has been working to promote queer-feminist art on various stages, creating a safe space that calls for dialogue and solidarity between struggles.
In the group exhibition at Alfred Gallery, the Bush collective seeks to reveal and discuss questions about spectrum and identity through the image of "interchange" - an engineering structure that allows grade separation of roads, railways or paths through a system of bridges. This image of interchange is reflected in Shir Handelsman's video-art work in which people's identities change during the crossing of the metro barrier. The exhibition is constructed as an interchange of identities and the works that span the gallery space reveal human diversity. The different art and performance events that will take place during the exhibition are also constructed as an interchange, outlining the passages through the various levels of the building and relating to the transition experience both physically and mentally.
The process of forming and creating a queer identity confronts the environment with its common, dichotomous, gender and social structures. At the same time as the queer identity can be perceived as contradictory or a cause of disparity, it also offers a flexible and comprehensive experience of existence. "For a long time there was a seam between my gender identities, when I didn't know how to write myself. The pronouns in the songs I wrote came out confused, a mixture of raw sensations"; taken from a poem by Or Gross that takes part in the exhibition. However, from an external perspective, interchange structures can be perceived as complicated and chaotic, they also conceal a possibility of producing a sense of gentle levitation and lingering in a stratified space. So is the thought behind the exhibition, in the viewer's encounter with queer-feminist art.
The exhibition is wrapped up in multi-gendered Hebrew created by Michal Schomer member of the Bush collective. It is a language with a set of new Hebrew letters that enables writing and reading in multigender. The designed language that envelopes the exhibition calls for the dismantling of the dichotomous gaze, which is shared by all the works presented in the exhibition.
Burn the Bridges Down:
Interchange is the seventh exhibition in the annual theme of 2019, which is dedicated to exhibitions relating to the concept Burn Your Bridges Down.
The word Bridge describes an architectural functional structure that connects two places, and is commonly used as a metaphor. The command Burn your bridges is used as a strategic plan in situations of siege or persecution.
Bridges symbolize physical and mental territories, changes and transitions between periods and interpersonal relationships. We are accustomed to thinking that the path to growth and progress must be based on creating continuity and bridging gaps. Sometimes, however, the only way to move on, to reinvent ourselves, to rise up like a phoenix from the painful memories, is to sever the relationship irreversibly. To burn the bridges so that we can no longer go back, in order to prevent demons from the past from continuing to persecute us.
In the 2019 exhibition we will examine the concept of burn your bridges down from a variety of aspects: personal, intimate, political, historical, gender and social.