Borderlands- Work by Daniel Kiczales, Tanja Schlander, Corrie Siegel and Rona Yefman
Actual Size Los Angeles
August 17 – September 21, 2013
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 17, 7:00-11:00
Actual Size Los Angeles is pleased to present Borderlands, a group exhibition that features work by Rona Yefman, Daniel Kiczales, Tanja Schlander and Corrie Siegel. The works on view explore the interaction between multiculturalism, nationality, politics, and how they affect the individual. Each artist navigates barriers between Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem and the surrounding region. Displaced many miles from its geographic subject, the exhibition situates Middle Eastern border issues spatially within Los Angeles. Sound, video and drawings shape an intimate space for dialogue about the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict as well as our relationship to place and the borders we create.
Jerusalem and Los Angeles are landscapes sculpted by boundaries, points of cultural diffusion and outsider interpretations. The exhibition and its supplemental events aim to voice the intercultural dialogues that are occurring in Israel today, as well as link Los Angeles viewers directly to these concerns. Borderlands explores the often polarizing topic of Israel’s boundaries through work that considers the complexity of this conflict.
In Rona Yefman and Tanja Shlander’s video, “Pippi Longstocking at Abu Dis” a Pippi Longstocking character in the Palestinian neighborhood Abu Dis struggles to pull down the separation wall between Israel and the West Bank. An adult Pippi approaches borders with a comic absurdity. The archetypal strong girl charismatically asks us to suspend disbelief. Earnest and playful, she prompts both passersby and the viewer of the work to bridge walls while working to tear them down.
“The Messenger” also shows an individual attempting to physically unite a divided terrain, this time through the creation and interpretation of sound. Daniel Kiczales stands upon Mount Scopus with guitar, his back facing the viewer. We look alongside him toward the Isswiya village, a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem. The musician is shown five times, in what seems to be the same day. At the beginning of each clip we hear the call to worship. As the muezzin’s voice rises the artist strums passionately, in a gesture that could be seen as offensive or reverent. The structured video conveys a poetic sense of longing through a piece of music that is harmonically resolved.
Tanja Schlander’s recordings screech and moan. Like fingernails on a chalkboard the isolated sounds elicit a physiological response. Schlandler drags contact microphones, ordinarily used to amplify acoustic instruments, along either side of the wall that separates Abu Dis and Jerusalem. The audio creates a challenging portrait of the border and highlights how difficult it is to listen through the walls we build.
Corrie Siegel’s meticulously drawn maps of Israel trace and overlay boundaries to the point of abstraction. The hand drafted works receive their form from strict adherence to source material. However, the lines also record the wavering hand, which subtly shapes and defines new borders with each pass. A record of flawed or subjective mechanics; the images take the form of Rorschach diagrams and tree rings. The principal shape becomes lost within outlines. As viewers’ eyes search to find the original map they may find their conclusions reflect their own existing perceptions.
Daniel Kiczales is a Jerusalem-based artist and musician. Kiczales received his BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Israel in 2011. Exhibitions include; Art Basel Miami, Miami; Re:visiting Rockefeller, Rockefeller Museum, Jerusalem; Haifa, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa Museum; Ambiguous Being, Tamtam Art gallery, Berlin, Germany; Kav 16, Tel – Aviv, Israel, Houg-Gah Museum, Taipei, Taiwan; Culture.Climate, Yaffo 23, Jerusalem; and Time / Resistance, Israeli Center for Digital Art, Jerusalem.
Tanja Schlander creates visual and sound art. She lives and works in Copenhagen. Schlander received her MFA from the Jutland Academy of Fine Arts in Denmark in 2007. In 2006 she studied at Bezalel Academy in Tel Aviv. Group exhibitions include Post Hiphop,MOHS exhibit, Copenhagen, Denmark; The Girl Effect, Lombard Freid Gallery, New York, NY; She Devil on Tour, The National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), Bucharest, Romania; and Asking We Walk, Voices Of Resistance, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Corrie Siegel lives and works in Los Angeles. Siegel received her BFA from Bard College, New York in 2007. Selected exhibitions include; The Subterraneans, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA; Blank Land, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA; IJAYA, Ben Uri Gallery, London, UK; Re: present LA, Vincent Price Art Museum, Monterey Park, CA;Chainletter, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; GIBSMIR- Family;Tree Structure, Collective Show LA, Los Angeles, CA; EPCAP, Negative Space, Los Angeles, CA;E’clepsydre, .HBC, Berlin, Germany; Family Stories, Pasadena Museum of History, Pasadena, CA; Photography At High Speed, Millard Sheets Center For The Arts, Los Angeles CA; The Picture Reason, Photographs by Corrie Siegel, Woods Gallery, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; Couperin, Joanie for Jackie Film Festival, New York; Games,Los Angeles Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Smoking Mirrors, UCLA Kerchoff Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. Siegel is a founder and Co-Director of Actual Size Los Angeles. She is a current Six Points Fellow.
Rona Yefman lives and works in New York City. She received her MFA from Columbia University and BFA from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Israel. Solo exhibitions include: Tuff Enuf, Somer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; Marth A Bouke, project #4, Derek Eller Gallery, NY; Time Kills, Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY; Let It Bleed,Participant Inc., NY; 2 Flags, Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel-Aviv; Bebe- A Family Album,Shapiro Galley, Jerusalem; Bunny on the Roof, Borochove Gallery, Tel Aviv. Group exhibitions include: The Kids Are All Right, The Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC, John Michael Kohler Center, Sheboygan, WI; Composed: Identity, Politics, The Jewish Museum, NY; Prolonged Exposure, CCA, Tel Aviv, Israel; Minor Crops May Occur, Lombard Freid Project, NY; Win Last Don’t Care, Ramiken Gallery, NY, Night Gallery, CA; Living Room, Helena Rubinstein Pavilion, The Tel Aviv Museum, Israel; In-Difensa, International Biennial, Torino, Italy;Hugging and Wrestling, Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, OH; The Girl Effect,Lombard Fried Projects, NY; TLV Time 2009, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel.
This exhibition is made possible with support from The Six Points Fellowship. The Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists is a program of the Foundation for Jewish Culture, originally founded in partnership with Avoda Arts, and JDub, with significant funding from The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, and the Righteous Persons Foundation.