Capharnaüm, 2012-2013

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Texte de Déborah Abergel

The word “Capernaum” comes from the Hebrew “Kfar Nahum”, which literally means village of consolation or reconciliation.

In biblical tradition, the town of Capernaum was the scene of great tumult.

Jerusalem, where the artist has lived for the last eight years, represents for her both a village of consolation and reconciliation, and a teeming, tumultuous source of inspiration, astonishment and experimentation.

Under the title “Capernaum”, the artist has gathered together works whose aestheticism is suggestive of accumulations of objects, photos, newspapers, flags, etc. to which she at times gives order, but at others mixes, mingles and even mangles in her personal “washing machine”.

The artist plays on this disorder as if to de-dramatize a situation which she sees as totally “topsy-turvy”. There is a distinctly playful aspect to these works. A game in which she invites the passer-by to become the initially unwitting and puzzled actor: the costume game (birds of a feather…), the game of telling looks (United Nations), the advertising game (Made in Holy Land), the hop-scotch street game (Peace Zone), the imitation game (doing one’s dirty washing in public) and finally the stool-pigeon game (don’t be gulled!).

In these works, she also throws up derisively humorous parallels between the “outrageous” behavior of one side and the other, pitting them back to back, aligning them side by side, and even putting them face to face with their responsibilities.

Her critical, humane but ironic take on Jerusalem won’t fail to involve the spectator in an entertaining and off-beat experience of this “world city” at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.