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Gut Reflections. Israel. Palestine. 2002

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Gut Reflections. Israel. Palestine. 2002

An Art Installation by Adi Yekutieli
Confronting Contradictions

Contemplations on Gut Reflections. Israel.  Palestine. 2002

Adi Yekutieli’s artistic activity encompasses an eclectic range of media, from painting, collage, textile and sculpture to mixed media, installation, performance and use of language. Despite the diversity of media, his work displays a consistency in its approach and choice of themes, focusing on fundamental existential experiences on issues extending beyond the bounds of a specific time and place, and yet such that carries a coherent observation of local reality. Yekutieli who lived 14 years in the States wrote in the 80’s: “The airplane took me away. They called it the land of all possibilities and some place back there you are, my beloved country, my homeland. I took the airplane not to run away from you. I took it to be able to think about you and to make art about you”. And indeed, in Gut Reflections. Israel. Palestine. 2002 Yekutieli presents a sound and articulate artistic statement looking at the Israeli predicament with a critical eye. Thus, he follows a familiar theme of his past work dealing with perception of history, colonialism, personal and collective memory, issues of identity, and the impact of occupation and oppression on the Arab – Jewish relationship. Born in the late 50’s, Yekutieli is part of a generation that experienced the 6 Day War as what was considered then, to be a decisive triumph, and since has undergone the process of disillusionment. In this exhibit Yekutieli presents a hard glance at this process skillfully bringing to culmination his artistic abilities using various media. 

Intertwined with his studio work he has explored for many years the position of the artist in society and the impact of art in the community constantly operates in these two domains. Gut Reflections. Israel. Palestine. 2002. reflects the existence of these two worlds in his creative process as an exchange, as two entities that foster each other. Both in the community work, and in this installation work Yekutieli positions himself available and approachable for intimate human interaction and communication and by that questions the canonical romantic mythical perception of the artist as a lonely marginalized figure, cut off from society. Yekutieli sees his everyday life reality embedded in his artwork and inseparable from his choice to work in communities. He refuses the traditional argument that separates ‘fine art’ from community art insisting on positioning art as communicative social mediator. As an artist his work desires to touch all audiences in variable levels of discussion from the emotional to intellectual and conceptual. From an ideological point of view he is concerned with human rights, social justice and minorities issues. Along with these concerns exist passion and empathy for humanity, attentiveness to emotional and psychological circumstances and a strong reaction to the physical and emotional deterioration of human life situation.

 

Gut Reflections. Israel. Palestine. 2002 is an installation configured from three elements: two pieces of molded parts of the artist’s body filled with raw cow guts; a series of 29 images consisting of some of the artist’s art work done in the last 20 years. Some of the art work he did with Arab communities in the last 6 years in Israel and Palestine, and some are photos representing local reality. The last component presents fragments from an email exchange between Yekutieli and a Palestinian woman he met in Balata Refugee Camp in the summer of 2000. The correspondence starts in September 2000, a month before the outbreak of the Palestinian 2nd Intifada and ends in Spring 2001 with the death of Yekutieli’s brother.

As one enters the gallery the first thing to be seen is a tall cinder-block wall blocking the entrance. The viewer is trapped in a small claustrophobic area between the entrance door and the wall without being able to look into the gallery. To a viewer who is familiar with reality in the occupied territories this experience may be associated with notions of closed borders, check points, house construction and destruction, notions of a lost home, longing to belong, ownership of land, power of the occupier and fear. The wall as symbol exists both in Yekutieli’s previous installations and in his community work as muralist. The cinder blocks wall contains in its compartments official Harvard envelopes that hold one dialogue fragment from the letter exchange between Adi Yekutieli and N, a Palestinian woman. The official Harvard icon, mythological for its reputation of excellence and representing western intellectual achievement tells a narrative of a certain time and place, remote in every possible way from its holding: a tragic and hopeless attempt of two people doomed in a existential conflict to converse. One reality within another. The viewers are invited to choose one or more envelopes and to share some of this desperate conversation. Then they proceed into the gallery. This is not the only choice the spectator will be asked to make. Yekutieli’s interactive approach comes from an inclusive arts approach embracing the audience as intimate partner in the artistic experience. 

A hanging-lighted human figure is suspended from the ceiling; its one leg is very close to the floor facing a suspended torso. A strong impression of a disembodied wounded human being. What comes across is an overwhelming and enigmatic sense of confusion and sadness. A sense of rejection and attraction along with notions of fragility and vulnerability; violence and beauty; strength and gentleness. As one gets closer, rich and colorful internal monochrome texture is revealed to the eye, intense in its rhythm and dynamic in movement. Yekutieli makes a skeptical reference to the classic perception of Western traditional body representation of man. Still, his figure’s internal organs, cow guts, become an exposed and hurting layer of muscle tissue and thus, raw as they are, become a protective body layer, a shield. Man’s heroic body becomes a representation of degeneration. 

Guts, as an essential organ of the digestive system, are perceived by Chinese medicine as an Earth element, the source of energy that supplies the body with its basic survival needs: strength and resiliency. It is also the place where feelings and memories of sadness, sorrow, loss, fear and distress are storaged. As Yekutieli writes to N, his Palestinian friend, in the midst of the Intifada: “It seems that these days will be stored in boxes of bitter memories”.

The need to maintain life and bear a violent reality takes endless effort, as one experiences endless humiliation, unbearable fear and a lost sense of hope, ambiguity, deterioration and numbness occurs. This brings to either, a complete detachment or an absolute despair. Yekutieli positions the vulnerability of his own body in the core of the Israeli – Palestinian conflict. This is an attempt to examine this dilemma from a human point of view. The suspended figure presents the body with all its imperfections. Delicate and yet firm, precise and massive, its transparency reveals wrinkles, skin pores, hair and veins stressing the body’s helplessness and degeneration. Again, referring to traditional European art practice of self-portrait, Yekutieli produces the subject as an object, looking at himself as if from outside but is relentless in disclosing the body as a field of pain. Subtle and yet powerful, Yekutieli avoids sensational use of violent images or specific coherent political statements focusing on the human situation.

The work stands on the fine line between the personal and the political, local and universal. Its sources are rooted in a personal loss of Yekutieli’s brother who died last April waiting for a heart transplant in New York City. Close witness to the betrayal of the body, fear of death, the impact of uncontrollable dysfunctional physical body, rottenness and an overwhelming notion of the termination of one’s path in life, he transforms a personal loss to a collective and political dilemma.  The piece can be placed anywhere, anytime in any context, producing a universal human statement. Metaphorically it refers to the devastating impact of personal experience of oppression, threat, hate, fear, pain and agony on human nature. The horrifying loss of judgment and virtuous that brings to the degradation of humanity.

Twenty nine images are presented as part of the exhibit. They were carefully selected from a wide range of experiences Yekutieli was engaged with professionally and personally in the last 20 years. This is not a retrospective view of his artistic work nor of his life, but rather condensed statements of different realities echoing simultaneously the life of people in Israel and Palestine. Positioning the images in juxtaposition to the sculpture and letter exchange, Yekutieli asks the viewer to become active again, make choices and produce meaning.

 In a well-known passage, Roland Barthes talks about meaning and its reading, describing what’s called ‘the open work’ and the spectator role as a producer of meaning: “ Every image is polysemeous; it implies, subjacent to its signifiers, a floating chain of signifieds, of which the reader can select some and ignore the rest. Polysemy gives rise to the questioning of meaning, and this questioning always appears as a dysfunction…Hence, in every society a certain number of techniques are developed in order to fix the floating chain of signified, to combat the terror of uncertain signs. “[i]

Yekutieli is aware of the cultural differences between the Middle East and America, Israel and Palestine and to the complexity of the various interpretations and discourses possible. By that he follows Stuart Hall encoding-decoding theory which allows a measure of negotiated or oppositional reading of the text by the audience. The text (images, words) is located somewhere between its producer (artist) and the reader and framed (encoded) by the producer in a certain way. The reader decodes the message according to personal, social, political and cultural background. [ii]

 The email exchange between Yekutieli and N, a Palestinian woman he met in the summer of 2000 in Balata Refugee Camp raises many questions. This is a serious attempt to create an open space for discussion between two people who stand on two sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. At the point of departure, their statements express best intentions to try and deconstruct the paradigms they came from and reach a level of ability to talk. As the political situation gets worse, as peace hopes crash and become remote and violence ascends, an overwhelming sense of desperation rises from their words. These are two personal stories that struggle with notions of personal representation versus collective representation. Human versus political. Its importance is embedded in the implicit message it carries, letting us know that in this story there are many stories. That despite an extreme and strong will to create an effective dialogue, it is hard and almost impossible. The true meaning of peace is the ability to understand that all narratives are legitimate and may exist in what is called ‘the same reality’. That the real work of peace is to be able to deconstruct institutional meta-narratives and develop attentiveness to the other’s point of view. That the power to accept or reject history is in one’s hands.

Gut Reflections. Israel. Palestine. 2002 is an intricate artistic statement that poses questions about social, political, cultural, aesthetic and human issues. It fits Herbert Marcuse’s theory of the Subversive Potential of Art [iii] and brings into view what most people refuse to see: the confronting contradictions in all forms, at all levels and of crossing beyond the parameters of the art world. Yekutieli understands the responsibility we all must assume for securing the survival of this region. He projects this awareness through his choice of studio and community artwork. At such difficult times, when violence and terror are part of everyday life in the region this exhibit represents the core of the situation: the frustrating people to people disconnection, the personal and collective pain, loss of hope and desperation. Yet, this artwork may serve as a meeting place for interaction and discussion. As a mediation platform for efforts made to enhance communication and discourse, as Yekutieli writes to N: “You know, there is no other way but talking…People like us must talk”.

Yael Nativ

Curator

Tel Aviv, March 2002  


[i] Roland Barthes, “Rhetoric of the Image” in the Responsibility of Forms, New York, Hill and Wang, 1985 p. 28 (Translated from the French by Richard Howard)

 

[ii] Stuart Hall “The Television Discourse – Encoding and Decoding, from Education and Culture, # 25 (UNESCO, 1974).

[iii] Carol Becker “Herbert Marcuse and the Subversive Potential of Art” from Zones of  Contention: essays on art, institutions, gender and anxiety”, 1996 State University of New Your Press


Gut Reflections. Israel. Palestine. 2002.
 Mixed media installation
 By Adi Yekutieli and curated by Yael Nativ

 April 6-18, 2002

 Adams
House Art Space
 10 Linden Street
 Cambridge
, MA 02138
 gutreflections@yahoo.com


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