A Portable museum of refugees

Ranei Mazor

Curator: Eytan Bartal

The exhibition is shown as part of the HIT second degree program in design

11.10.2018 - 09.11.2018

Portable museum of refugee

On Thursday, October 11, 2018, Alfred – A Cooperative Institute for Arts and Culture will open a solo exhibition titled Portable museum of refugee featuring the works of artist Ranei Mazor.

Mazor uses similar methods of natural history museums to lure in the viewers. The exhibition features a series of dioramas and miniature 3D models, which visitors will be able to view through small display windows.

The dioramas bring the viewer face to face with images arising from personal testimonies of African refugees who migrate to Israel, and thus encourage viewers to make up a narrative themselves. Their construction was based on a study conducted by Mazor on the topic of Nobel Activism, as part of his Master's degree in Integrated Design at the Holon Institute of Technology (HIT). The featured exhibition is a part of Mazor's final project, academically advised by Eitan Bartal, and is part of an activist process aimed at raising awareness of the refugee situation in a non-aggressive manner, which seeks to offer an alternative discourse.

The dioramas fuse documentary and fantasy. They derive their sources from real stories, but allow themselves to transcend actual content, thus raising awareness of the surrealistic situation of the refugees.

For example, in one of the dioramas a chilling structure is represented under the title Warehouse of Children, many of which are scattered throughout south Tel Aviv. The dull, estranged, shabby room is positioned on a well-lit sunflower matting. The connection seems artificial, and despite its beauty, it only emphasizes the oppression as part and parcel of the situation.

Vision and Failure – Annual Theme for 2018

Portable museum of refugee will be the eighth exhibition of 2018, which will consist entirely of exhibitions revolving around the theme 'Vision and Failure'. By dealing with the chosen subject, Alfred Gallery seeks to expand the field of meanings that are embedded between the words vision, success, failure, intent and improvisation, raise questions about the factors that define these concepts, and break up centers of power.

In the series 'Vision and Failure', Alfred Gallery seeks to examine the possible opportunities inherent in failure: experimentalism, fragility, weakness, indecision, confusion. Alfred Gallery seeks to direct the spotlight to daring and risk taking activities inherent in the word failure. This is in order to present additional nuances in the experience of art making and the observing experience.