Turbulences
Solo exhibition: Sharon Azagi
Curators: Edith Kofsky and Bar Mussan Levi
06 June 2024 - 29 June 2024
Turbulences
Solo exhibition: Sharon Azagi
Curators: Edith Kofsky and Bar Mussan Levi
Turbulences, a solo exhibition by artist Sharon Azagi, is the fifth exhibition in the 2024-2025 exhibition year under the theme “Bein Hashmashot: Between Night and Day; End – Edge - Addendum”.
The exhibition, curated by Edith Kofsky and Bar Mussan Levi, will open on Friday, May 31st. Azagi presents a complex installation that incorporates video and a spatial installation where sound and image interact.
In the video work "Balloons" we see an abandoned agricultural site where 42 white helium balloons are installed, tied to the ground with wires and held down with concrete weights. We hear a woman singing "The Show Must Go On". The woman's voice produces a chain of unexpected events: sensitive microphones translate her song into frequencies resembling a swarm of desert locusts. The sounds accumulate to a whispering symphony, that via a surprising encrypted technological array, based on words and syllables, generates a detonation action that releases the field of balloons into the air. The ignition that sets the balloons free also torches and explodes them, and the resulting explosions become part of the symphony of sounds. In the gallery space, simultaneous video views of the unfolding sequence of events are displayed, so that the mechanisms of photography and editing disclose the mysterious apparatus subsisting between field and sky. Alongside the video work is a mobile-like sculptural installation of fluorescent lighting tubes, light and lightning.
Similar to the field of balloons, the fluorescent tubes are ignited by electric currents bursting from a Tesla battery, like lightning in the sky. The currents produce sound frequencies similar to locust chirping, a live accompaniment to the symphony playing in the video.
About the artist
Sharon Azagi graduated with a bachelor's degree (2015) and a master's degree (2020) from Bezalel's art department. Engages in video, sculpture, robotics, programming, cyber art, and sound.
In her work, Azagi explores possible codings and ways of acting to mediate physical bodies through digital worlds, while juxtaposing physical and mechanical processes. She builds systems, some
Bein Hashmashot: Between Night and Day;
End – Edge – Addendum.
The Door in the Wall is the sixth exhibition of the 2023-2014 exhibition season, presented on the subject of the trilogy Bein Hashmashot: Between Night and Day; End – Edge – Addendum. Today’s times are characterized by a sense of urgency which can lead to one-dimensionality, yet also invites a complex, “multi-focal” analysis. One cannot discuss the present without considering the past and building the future.
End: There is a sense that the imminent end is lingering in the air, boundaries have been crossed, the world order has been upended, and doubt has now been cast on assumptions that were once axioms. That which was once taken for granted is no longer certain. What is good and what is bad? How can one distinguish between the two? The word “end” signifies the finishing part, the point where the thing ceases to exist.
Threshold: The threshold is a gate, an opening one must pass through in the struggle to restore meaning, decorum, and standards. In order to recover, one must consent to sojourn in threshold spaces, in destruction and uncertainty. One must agree to touch upon loss, compromise, and change. One must push up against the edges and taste the ashes.
Addendum: Lingering within a sense of destruction, anxiety, and horror enables, in the end, hope to sprout. From wallowing in the depths, the cracked and broken areas, and from disease, separation, loss, and collapsed systems, a seed sprouts, breathing new life into the consciousness and the body and helping to identify the strength embodied within them.