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Gloves, rice and videotape >>Irit Batsry is at it again at Oboro by KEITH MARCHAND
As Irit Batsry is better known in Europe and the United States, I have compiled some background info that you can cut out. She was born and educated in Israel, now resides in New York and works in Cologne. She has been awarded the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship as well as a list of international prizes, and has also shown extensively in such high-profile centres as Paris, Madrid, Rio, London and New York. To Leave and to Take is part of a larger thematic work in progress (titled Neither There Nor Here) resulting from some time Batsry spent in southern India. The central element to this deceptively simple installation is the "hand." Countless numbers of these hands are strewn about the gallery floor, placed either individually or in mounds built up to resemble sandbag shields--used as protection from either flooding or as barriers against bullets. Each hand is, in actuality, a plastic glove (the kind used to ensure hygienic food handling) that has been filled with uncooked rice. Over two thousand objects are used in the piece, adding up to over one ton of rice. Video projections play on the walls and support columns, displaying footage taken in India. All the footage shows food and its preparation in the hands of villagers. As one negotiates one's way around the installation site, it becomes impossible not to appear in the films themselves, in silhouette. The flickering, subdued lighting and the eerie topography caused by carefully placed spotlights modify the realm. To Leave and to Take deals with serious topics through specific references to India itself: the politics of food as well as our notion of shelter and safety. The people captured on video are shown preparing food in an earthy, hands-on manner--whether preparing spices with mortar and pestle or cleaning rice for consumption. This is juxtaposed against the sheer abundance of rice in the gallery space that remains untouched. To Leave and to Take is an ambiguous piece. It defies an easy reading but this does not take away from what seems to be its most important element: lush and lyrical imagery that just happens to make one contemplate the global politics of food. By the way, all the rice used in the installation will be given to a food bank at the show's end. 4001 Berri, suite 301, 844-3250
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Even if you missed internationally acclaimed video and installation artist Irit Batsry at the 3e Manifestation Vidéo et Art Électronique in September, there is no need for despair. You can put that revolver back into your sock drawer and come out of your darkened room. Until October 19 at Oboro, you will be given your third and final chance. To Leave and to Take is an installation created specifically for Oboro and since Batsry rarely does installations, this is worth a gander.