Page 33 - 50.La Biennale di Venezia issue of World of Art Magazine

ARSENALE

without entering directly into social, political or anthropological analysis or shaping contemporary experience locally and globally. These fault lines
without abandoning a highly personal language and approach. Discussing have been etched into the physical fabric of our world through the effects
Luhmann’s book Art as a Soda/ System, Art & Language wrote: “This is of colonialism and post colonialism, of migration and globalization. Their
a way that art can be integrated into everyday: by accepting, describing reverberations echo through contemporary lived experience and in the
and re-describing its own differentiation as form.” work of these 15 artists working across a range of media from painting
and sculpture through to architecture, photography and installation. Their
FAULT LINES: works span five decades, four continents and three generations, resisting
CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN ART AND SHIFTING LANDSCAPES any notion of an authentic or one-dimensional African experience.
CURATED BY GILANE TAWADROS AND PRODUCED BY THE FORUM One of the most important artists of his generation Frank Bowling
FOR AFRICAN ARTS created map paintings in the late 1960s and early 1970s which combine
In geological terms, fault lines reveal themselves as fractures in the earth’s his investigations into the formal properties of picture making with his
surface but they also mark a break in the continuity of the strata. Fault political preoccupations. Bowling not only put the political into ‘Pop
lines may be a sign of significant shifts, or even of impending disaster, Art’ but also put postcolonial concerns into contemporary art, thereby
but they also create new landscapes. Fault Lines: Contemporary African creating a sublime tension between form and content and laying the
Art and Shifting Landscapes brings together contemporary artists from ground for subsequent generations of artists for whom aesthetic and
Africa and the African Diaspora whose works trace the fault lines that are political concerns are never mutually exclusive. In the work of the

Michal Helfman
“Kohav Ya’ir”, 2003
Installation, Mixed Media
250 x 350 x 400 cm.

The Owl

Multimedia Installation by Michal Helfman
In the middle of the room stands a metallic
owl surrounded with mirrors in the form
of dripping water. The mutual reflection
creates a kaleidoscope effect. Above the
owl there is a lighting fixture designed to
look like an owl’s eye. For few minutes
it will radiant with a strong, bright light
that will almost blinds whoever enters the
room, and then, for few minute the strong
light will shut down and the owl will tell
stories of wisdom.

The owl is the symbol of wisdom.
For him night time is the time of
compassion and contemplation.
WORLD of ART 33