She's Not Here

Asia Weksler and Lihee Avidan

Curator: Noa Lieberman

24.09.2015 - 23.10.2016

On Thursday November 20, 2014, Alfred – A Cooperative Institute for Arts and Culture, will open a double exhibition titled 'She's not here', which will feature the works of Asia Weksler and Lihee Avidan.

Asia Weksler graduated with honors from the "Hamidrasha" College of Art in 2014, in art and education. Her art questions the role of representation of women in culture. Weksler will exhibit processed photographs, mixed media works, and video art

Lihee Avidan, an independent documentary photographer, winner of 2012 "Local Testimony", series of the year. Throughout her career she won numerous awards, participated international exhibitions and her works have been published in magazines worldwide. Avidan will present a series of photographs and a sound art piece.

In the exhibition "She's not here", both artists examine the socio-cultural space that allows the exploitation of women as part of the prostitution and pornography industry. The gallery environment allows the viewers a pseudo-normal observation at these abnormal social phenomena. The refined aesthetic content in the cultural environment allows an external and detached perspective from the reality that exists outside the gallery space.

Avidan's photographs depict prostitutes' working rooms, a small representation of hundreds of rooms where women work night and day. The rooms are presented as crime scenes. Avidan invites us to peep into the forbidden space and read the signs: a towel, some cream and toilet paper beside the bed - clues to the presence of a woman who works in the room and the men who visit them.

Avidan's works reveal directly what we as a society choose not to see, despite the huge presence of this phenomenon in our midst. We live in this reality, which uses a woman, objectifies her, exploits her, and throws her back to the street.

In Weksler's works, the female image reappears, in ready-made photographs and in photographs of herself, of her own body. The women are presented as a response to the fantasy that sets the woman as an object of desire, such as porn films, and as part of the visual culture surrounding us.

Weksler is trying to sabotage the observation mechanism, leaving the woman as an object of the male's gaze, a male's desired object. She manipulates the image and thus produces works that challenge the perceived image of sexuality.

Some of the questions that arise in this exhibition are what is considered "sexy"? What arouses passion in the viewer or costumer?

Each artist is trying in her own way to bring the woman back and to cut her loose from the binding fantasy that leaves her only as a sex object.