Ruth Patir: Female Statuettes from the Dayan Collection
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"These still female figurines made of ceramic and stone are brought to life as lively and humorous, smiling and flirting with the viewer as if summoning the ancient ceremony in which the idols were created. The figurines in the work were chosen not because of their dates or grace and charm but because they all come from the late general Moshe Dayan archeology private collection currently on display at the Israel Museum. Thus the artist relates these figurines to the Israeli man that has collected them, evoking common tropes of objectification and fetish of women and with the fetish for archaeology collecting. Patir then asks us in bringing these still figures to life to observe the ways in which the female image has been culturally fixated.”
*Adapted from an excerpt by curator Ruth Oppenheim, written for Zumu, Museum on the Move, Hazor Haglilit. |
Ruth Patir (b.1984 in New York, USA) is a multimedia artist and filmmaker whose works deal with gender paradigms and power relations, often mixing historical and national narratives with the artist's own autobiography. In her works Patir expands the boundaries of representation in the digital age, working against the gender and racial biases that populate the field of animation, 3d simulations and Artificial Intelligence. She is the recipient of the “Young Video Artist” prize from the Israel Ministry of culture (2018) and she is currently a member of the Artport Residency program sponsored by the Arison Foundation (2019-2020). Her film Sleepers (2017), awarded The Experimental Cinema and Video Art Award at the Jerusalem Film Festival, is a contemplation on the dream-state as a site for political intervention and it was commissioned for Danspace Projects New York and ironically presented during president elect Donald Trump’s Inauguration. Patir’s work has been exhibited at venues such as CCA Center for Contemporary Art – Tel Aviv, Ashdod Art Museum, PrintScreen Festival, Petach Tikva Museum of Art, Anthology Film Archives – New York, MoMA Museum of Modern Art – New York, Kav 16 Gallery – Tel Aviv, and Flux Factory New York among others. The artist holds a BFA from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design Jerusalem, and an MFA from Columbia University in the city of New York.