An exploration of identity, gender and socio-economic class through the private and familial space
The Beyond Within
Artists: Boodi and George, Vered Nissim
Curator: Raafat Hattab
Opening: 14.3.2013
Dismantling: 2.5.2013
The basic premise of the existentialist revolt is that one should not approach the understanding of a person without relating to his world of experiences: understanding has to be personal, emerge from everyday life, and grow from reality. The individual is exposed on all their facets in their living and subjecting form. This principle rebels against the idea of examining the individual outside of the central stage of life, against the alienation of the individual and the disregard of their own internal world.
Existentialism is the accumulation of discontent, terror, anxiety and uncertainty that tear away substantial pieces of the social mask in order to expose the absurdity, alienation and emptiness behind it. The existentialist approach shatters anything that is a given, anything that is cold, detached, and does not belong to one's private world. In one’s quest to find the true meaning of their existence, a person must direct themselves towards their internal being, and find his way back to the real origins of his own human existence.
The artist stands on the gnawed boards that comprise the stage of our lives, on all the growing gaps that increase racism, intolerance and lack of acceptance, on the exploitation, the oppression disguised as supervision, and on all forms of punishment. He performs a sort of processing of this reality, thus undermining the perception that there are only one reality and one truth. And since there is not only one reality, the artist experiences life in a different manner through his social, political and personal prisms, experiences which are then directed to the constant preoccupation with existential issues: loneliness, aging, death, meaninglessness, existential emptiness.
The artworks in the exhibition explore identity, gender and socio-economic class through the private and familial space, by integrating personal materials with motifs taken from fairy tales and characteristics of popular culture. The juxtaposition of the two supposedly unrelated worlds sheds light on the manner these characteristics are expressed and manifested in the private worlds of the artists, as an individual that does not represent any public. They touch the polar opposites of the private and social and raise questions concerning the relationship between culture and its conventions to the private life as well as between art and the detachment it creates to the reality it represents.