ESTHER NAOR: A Sudden Dark Breeze Over My Uncovered Skin by BOSI Contemporary

ESTHER NAOR

A Sudden Dark Breeze Over My Uncovered Skin Curated by Lilly Wei

BOSI Contemporary, New York April 29 - May 30, 2015

Writing by: Lilly Wei Photography: Yotam From (Exhibited Works) Srđan Kalinić (Installation shots) Cover: Esther Naor, There Wasn’t a Man, Woman, or Child I Could Lift a Finger for, 2014 (Detail) Design: BOSI Contemporary ISBN:

978-1-329-05206-2

Contents 7

ELsewhere, Anywhere, Here

INSTALLATION SHOTS

EXHIBITED WORKS

Artist Biography

CONTRIBUTORS

Lilly Wei

elsewhere, Anywhere, Here

Esther Naor’s newest work continues to probe themes that have long been part of her life. These include migration, boundaries, cultural displacement and nostalgia, and shifting definitions of what constitutes community and otherness accompanied by an equally shifting sense of self, of connection and estrangement. Naor, who lives in Tel Aviv, reflects inevitably, if at times obliquely, upon social, psychological and political conditions in an area of the world that has become increasingly unstable and violent, its societies in conflict. Offering multi-layered narratives across a range of media that are often presented as installations, it is her striking, idiosyncratic and, at times, startling images that make her projects so memorable. Naor’s lens is sensitive and insistently personal, focused on the complex history and cultural heritage of her family, Iraqi Jews who immigrated to Israel in the early days of its statehood. Invested in the land as a daily reality and as metaphor, an uneasy sense of place animates her work and gives it traction. Naor’s topical production spins emblems of evil into good, good into evil, often circling the superstitious and magical thinking as ways to invoke relief. In a time when reality has become increasingly unbearable and resolutions elusive, she urgently questions the potency and impotency of art as well as the limits of human reasoning, even as she depends upon them.

The central installation in the exhibition are three whitened, life-sized plaster figures, stripped except for tall conical hats, inspired by the gleefully weird witches of Goya, in particular the androgynous, sorcerer-capped creatures of his painting, Witches’ Flight1 (1797-98). Naor also calls her curious figures witches, but she likes to twist meanings and transform expectations, in this instance turning them into beneficent beings, early responders to disasters whose job is to rescue victims, not to harm them. Like Goya’s supernatural creatures, the trio— the number three, which can symbolize stability and completion, is significant to Naor—hovers in space. Called How Far Would You Run with a Piece of Lead in Your Heart? (2014), two of the figures balance a bright orange stretcher between them while a third witch in There Wasn’t a Man, Woman, or Child I Could Lift a Finger for (2014) clutches a lifesaver, in striding position; all three are ready to spring into action. Associations thread the separate works together by content, image, material (often ready-mades) or all three, creating a more resonant narrative, a more immersive installation. Earth, for instance, is the major constituent of Any Other Place (2015), a corner mound of locally acquired dirt. It recalls works by Robert

2. Robert Smithson, Nonsite (Essen Soil and Mirrors), 1969, twelve mirrors, soil, each mirror: 36 x 36, overall: 36 x 72 x 72, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art © Holt-Smithson Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Courtesy of James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai.

3. Marcel Duchamp, Fresh Widow, 1920 / editioned replica 1964, miniature French window, painted wood frame and eight panes of glass covered with black leather, I/II, 30 1/2 x 17 5/8 x 4 in, the Vera and Arturo Schwarz Collection of Dada and Surrealist Art in the Israel Museum © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris Photo © Israel Museum, Jerusalem, by Avshalom Avital.

Smithson2 and Walter De Maria with a nod to Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ piles of wrapped candies. Bringing the outdoors, or nature, inside into a gallery, the heaped soil undergoes a transformation, re-cast as art. But its identity is not static, and it also remains stubbornly, emphatically what it is. To underscore its equivocal nature, the mound is made to breathe, inhaling and exhaling, as if it were alive or concealing something alive underneath. Both nurturing and threatening, soil is a matrix for growing things, for life, and for death, for what remains after catastrophic acts of destruction, natural and unnatural, as generations grind themselves into earth, into a dust that ultimately reclaims everything. Soil is also integral to I Do Not See the Sky (2013). Consisting of four full-sized windows, each topped by a lunette, it is a variant of Duchamp’s Fresh Widow3 (1920). Naor paints the frames a brilliant Mediterranean green-blue to make it more regionally evocative and fills in the space behind the clear glass planes with earth instead of the original black leather. While referring to perception, to what we see and do not see both optically and conceptually, Naor is again intent on transformation, turning the viewer’s space into a cross between an underground shelter and a tomb, a secret place of safety or somewhere suffocating, without an exit. The view from the windows, blocked by dirt, by earth, also suggests the eruptive geopolitics of the Middle East and elsewhere, anywhere, where clarity of vision and justice is blinded by the fiercely ideological contest for land that is believed by all who claim it to be their sacred right. There is a video in the exhibition that documents a ritual to avert the evil eye that was practiced by Naor’s grandmother and other relatives in Iraq. A bowl is filled with tap water; fragrant herbs and kitchen matches are stirred into it. It is then held over the artist’s head which is canopied by a protective towel reminiscent of a headscarf, reprising the fleeing, similarly covered figure in the Goya painting cited above. Melted tin is thrown into the bowl, exploding into irregular, constellated shapes. The ritual is repeated three times—the number three again. These shapes function as protective talismans, to be placed under a pillow and slept upon for, yes, three nights. She then mounted these chance configurations, these moments of time, as a series, Whenever Wherever Whatever Has Happened Is Written Down on the Waters of Babel (2014-2015), with another similar, digital print series, Any Minute Something Can Happen (2014), evidence of ancient traditions and emblems of protection that attempt to control the uncontrollable, she said.

Prefacing the series’ title, My Worry Beads (2014) with My, she explained, underscored the fact that worry beads were traditionally a male prerogative, the incessant, reflexive thumbing of them a male pastime to ease anxiety. Greatly enlarged from the size of a string of real worry beads, hers are made from floats for fishermen’s nets, another image of succor. Some are colored amber or coral, which are what beads are often made from, they represent another Iraqi custom from her grandparents’ lost way of life, not only because of displacement but also because that world itself has changed. Naor consistently charges her work with multiple meanings and visual puns. Fashioned from buoys that keep things afloat, her worry beads, given their scale, might be doubly lifesavers, offering both physical and emotional aid. In addition, worry beads recall the prayer beads used by practitioners of many of the world’s religions and while worry beads are not an implement of spirituality, they also provide comfort. Naor is deeply interested in transitions, in the space that she calls In between: in between reality and the supernatural; science and magic; skepticism and belief; the (Middle) East and West; culture and geography; tradition and the contemporary, the technological; her images double-edged, cutting a multitude of ways. Out of this space, Naor has evolved her own ambivalent, uncertain rituals of recovery that are deliberately naïve, intimate as well as sophisticated, rituals she believes in and does not, attempting to find alternate ways to solace and rescue those who have been lost, overlooked, damaged.

INSTALLATION SHOTS

EXHIBITED WORKS

My Worry Beads 2 2014

ready-made fishing net floats, linen rope and polypropylene yarns 87 x 15 3/4 x 4 in

My Worry Beads 1 2014

ready-made fishing net floats, linen rope and polypropylene yarns 102 x 20 x 6 in

Any Minute Something Can Happen (Orange) 2014 7 pieces out of a larger series digital print and wood frame 16 x 16 in each

See details of this series and the white series in the following pages

There Wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t a Man, Woman, or Child I Could Lift A Finger For 2014 acrylic plaster and ready-made life buoy 90 1/2 x 31 x 25 in

How Far Would You Run with a Piece of Lead in Your Heart? 2014 acrylic plaster and ready-made stretcher figure A: 94 1/2 x 22 x 26 in figure B: 75 x 21 1/4 x 37 in stretcher: 81 x 18 x 5 in

Whenever Wherever Whatever Has Happened Is Written Down on the Waters of Babel 2014 - 2015 7 pieces out of a larger series tin, aluminum, paint and coffee grinds 13 x 16 Â˝ in each (variable depth sizes) See details in the following pages

Three Days under the Pillow 2014 - 2015 still from video 2:50 min

Any Other Place 2015

soil, wood, plastic tubes, silicon, programmable logic controller and air compressor 59 x 67 x 51 in

I Do Not See The Sky 2013

3 pieces out of 4 wood, paint, glass, soil, brass 65 x 35 x 3 in each

I Do Not See The Sky (detail)

Artist biography Esther Naor was born in 1961 in Israel. She graduated from the department of Civil Engineering at Haifa Technion Institute, Israel, and the department of Computer Sciences at Tel Aviv University, Israel. Following a career in engineering and computers, she moved to art studies at the Midrasha Art School in Kfar Saba and at several artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; studios in Israel. She is working mainly in the mediums of sculpture, photography, and video. She lives and works in Israel. Selected exhibitions 2015 A Sudden Dark Breeze over My Uncovered Skin, solo show, Bosi Contemporary Gallery, New York Curator: Lilly Wei 2015 Good Fortune and a Blessing, group show, Museum of the Jewish People, Tel Aviv Curator: Carmit Blumenson 2015 Transformed Viewpoints, group show, A.I.R Gallery, New York Curator: Charlotta Kotik 2014 Fresh Paint 7, the Tel Aviv Art Fair 2014 2 on Richter Scale, group show, Florentin 45 Gallery, Tel Aviv Curators: Gilat Nadivi, Vera Pilpoul 2014 Point of Virtue, group show, Herzlilienblum Museum, Tel Aviv Curator: Neta Gal Atsmon 2014 Liminal Communities, group show, A.I.R Gallery, New York Curator: Lucy Li 2014 Ready-Set-Go, group show, Municipal Gallery, Rehovot Curators: Raya Tal Zommer, Ora Kraus 2014 I Do Not See the Sky, solo show, Yanco Dada Museum, Ein Hod Curator: Raya Zommer Tal

2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012

The International Plain Notebook Project, in the framework of the exhibition Not Book, Beit Haâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ir, Tel Aviv Curator: Guy Morag Zeplevitz Ready-Set-Go - 100 Years to the First Ready-made, group show, Yanco Dada Museum, Ein Hod Curator: Raya Tal Zommer Head, group show, Bosi Contemporary Gallery, New York Curators: Robert Curcio and Dominick Lombardi Testing Tools #10, group show, Beit Tami Center, Tel Aviv Curator: Carmit Blumenson I Do Not See the Sky, permanent installation, Yanco Dada Museum, Ein Hod Awakening, group show, Florentin 45 Gallery, Tel Aviv Curator: Gilat Nadivi Fragment, group show, A.I.R Gallery, New York Curator: Jill Conner Women Creation, video art group show, 4th Epos International Art Film Festival, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Program Coordinator: Sivan Shlack Imagination, group show for the Israel AIDS Task Force, Hapoalim Bank, Tel Aviv. Curator: Li-Mor Cohen HaMangalistim, group show, Hachava Gallery, Holon Curators: Anat Cohen and Guy Morag Zeplevitz Side Effects, solo show, Florentin 45 Gallery, Tel Aviv Curator: Ilan Wizgan Tempus Arti Triennial 2012, Landen, Linter and Zoutleeuw, Belgium Curators: Tim Cleuren and Dirk Lambrechts Night of Festivals 2012, Moving Image Programme, Nottingham Director: David Hill Summer Show, group show, Royal Academy of Arts, London Curator: Tess Jaray Hidden Cities, group show, Koza Visual Culture and Arts Association, Istanbul Curator: Luca Curci Fresh Paint 5, the Tel Aviv Art Fair, North-West Tel Aviv FashionSCAPES, the 7th Festival of Arts and Fashion (FAT), Toronto Director: Vanja Vasic

2012 2012 2011 2011 2011 2011 2011 2010 2010 2010 2010 2010 2009 2009 2009 2009 2008 2008

Celebrating Kindred Spirits and Strange Bed Fellows, group show, A.I.R Gallery, New York Curator: Catherine J. Morris Hidden & Forbidden Identities, group show, Palazzo Albrizzi, Venice Curators: Luca Curci, Elis Saint Juste You Are All Red, and So Very White, installation/solo show, Florentin 45 Gallery, Tel Aviv A Season in Paradise, group show, Florentin 45 Gallery, Tel Aviv Curator: Irena Gordon Video projections weekend, Centro Labicano Arte Contemporanea, Rome Infinite Spaces (part two), group show, Sguardi Sonori festival of multi-media and time-based art, Palazzo Orsini, Bomarzo Curators: Carlo Fatigoni, Sandro Cecchi Inter/National Members Exhibition, group show, A.I.R Gallery, New York Curator: Susanne Altmann Infinite Spaces (part one), group show, Sguardi Sonori festival of multi-media and time-based art, Museo della Civiltà Romana, Rome Curators: Carlo Fatigoni, Sandro Cecchi Solo show, Berliner Liste Art Fair, Berlin Open Portfolio, salon and group show, Chelsea Museum, New York Curator: Elga Wimmer Houses in the Boulevard, open-air group show, Rothschild Avenue, Tel Aviv Curator: Ilan Wizgan Reawakening, group show, Lana Santorelli Gallery, New York Tempus Arti 2009, Landen, Linter and Zoutleeuw, Belgium Curators: Dirk Lambrechts and Tim Cleuren. Artistic Advisor: Jan Hoet 15th Biennial of Cerveira, Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal Curators: Fátima Lambert (Portugal), Paulo Reis (Brésil) and Orlando Brito- Ginório (Spain). Contemporary Expressions, international photography group show, Pen & Brush Gallery, New York Curator: Daile Kaplan The 8th A.I.R. Gallery Biennial, New York Curator: Lilly Wei International photography exhibition on the theme of “Violence against Women”, Queen Sofía Center, Valencia Home, installation, Rothschild Avenue, Tel Aviv

2007 2007 2006 2005 2005 2004 2004

Bread and Roses, group show, Minshar Gallery, Tel Aviv Curator: Nir Nader Mask â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Identity, group show, Gebo gallery, Tel Aviv Curator: Nurit Tenne Urban Tales, time based installations on Rothschild Avenue, Tel Aviv Curator: Ilan Wizgan 100 Artists for A Museum, group show, Casoria Museum of Contemporary Art, Italy Curator: Antonio Manfredi Unclaimed Luggage, group show, Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid Curators: Klitsa Antoniou, Panayiotis Michael, Melita Couta OPENASIA, group show, Venice Lido Curator: Chang Tsong-zung Nomadifesta / Pack Your Suitcase, group show, Nicosia Curators: Klitsa Antoniou, Panayiotis Michael, Melita Couta

COntributors Lilly Wei Lilly Wei is a New York-based art critic, art writer, journalist and independent curator whose focus is contemporary art. Appearing regularly in publications in the United States and abroad, she has written for Art in America since 1984, a contributing editor at ARTnews and was a former contributing editor at Art Asia Pacific. In addition, she has been published in Art and Australia (Sydney), Art Press (Paris), Asian Art News (Hong Kong), Bijitsu Techo (Tokyo), Canvas (Dubai), randian (Hong Kong), RES (Istanbul), Sculpture Magazine (Washington, D.C.), Studio International (New York/London), among others. She has written hundreds of articles, reviews, interviews, essays and monographs on contemporary and modern art and artists and frequently reports on international exhibitions. Deeply committed to notfor-profit art organizations and emerging artists and art writers, she serves on the board of several such institutions. Wei was born in Chengdu, China and has an MA in art history from Columbia University.

BoSI Contemporary focuses on creating a space that will nurture a creative discourse between different facets of art and contemporary culture. International in scope, the gallery exhibits and communicates the work of both emerging and established artists, selected for their unique aesthetic language and fascinating vision. Our objective is to present an ambitious annual program that comprises of at least six exhibitions, accompanied by publications and catalogues, an annual museum-quality exhibition devoted to a historic or established artist, as well as partnerships which reinforce the influence of art on contemporary culture. Our central concern is to showcase, through our roster of artists as well as exhibitions, how international artists relate to one another at the root of their discipline through visual narratives amid various mediums and techniques. The galleryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s approximate 2,000 sq. ft. location at 48 Orchard Street (between Grand and Hester) in the heart of Lower East Side allows the gallery to be a dynamic space for artists as well as a venue for contemporary culture within our community.

Published by BOSI Contemporary on the occasion of the exhibition A Sudden Dark Breeze Over My Uncovered Skin on view from April 29 to May 30, 2015

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