In Focus – Scenes of Israeli Art

After visiting Israel several times and experiencing first-hand the local, vibrant art scene, we at Asylum Arts wanted to go back and document these artists in their own environment. The result is In Focus, a series of four videos that features exceptional artists in our network who further explore Israeli identity in their work. On-site, we heard about their struggles, daily routines and hopes for the future, which they conceive and realize in a location with complex longstanding conflict. Seen together, they convey multidisciplinary approaches to artistic practice, unexpected locations in Israel, and intriguing reciprocal relationships between creative spaces and daily engagement with the world outside the studio.

Participants include Nivi Alroy, a multidisciplinary artist who blends science with art; Itamar Paloge, a designer and street artist who creates installations with discarded objects; Liat Segal, a new media artist fusing together art and technology; and Sharon Vazanna, a dancer and choreographer who translates feelings, thoughts and memories into physical exploration.

Designer and artist Itamar Paloge works and creates under the name Faluja, taking his inspiration primarily from the streets. His work often comes out of the tension between private and public space, using materials of found objects like trash, scrap wood and other discarded items. Likewise, he creates work actually in the street, eliminating the backstage or the idea of a closed studio. Paloge does this as an invitation for dialogue – opening up his artistic practice that invites the viewer to access through the rawness of his materials and the way that he interacts with them. This creation is a response to and an interaction with consumer culture. He recycles trash as a response to it, and his art is a visual overload, or input-digestion-output of visual information.

Nivi Alroy is a multidisciplinary artist who focuses on sculpture, drawing, animation and installation, and recently was the artist-in-residence at Hebrew University’s Safra Campus of Mathematics and Life Science. Alroy works in many forms, blending the scientific with the artistic and drawing inspiration from two seemingly disparate realms. She translates an evolutionary theory of biology, giving it a physical, ethereal and sculptural form. Her work is bubbling with life – that of the transcendent, scientific, organic and microbial. She uses a wide array of materials in her sculptures, from traditional crafts to found objects, organic materials and animation.

Liat Segal is a new media artist, fusing together art and technology. Segal started her career firmly in the technology world and graduated with her MSc in computer science and biology from the Interdisciplinary Program for Fostering Excellence at Tel Aviv University. She has worked as a researcher at Microsoft Innovation Labs and taught at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. In her works Segal harnesses information, software, electronics and mechanics to build installations and machines that connect the physical world with virtual ones.

Sharon Vazanna is a dancer and choreographer whose work is based on personal experience and observation of the society that she lives in, her interaction with it, and the influence it has on her and others. Feelings, thoughts, and memories that arise through examination of specific research subjects translate into physical exploration that leads to movement-phrases, which she then choreographs into scenes that convey the subject and atmosphere of the creation. She refers to other sources of information, such as articles, books, and other media and art as part of her research process to expand her knowledge on the subject she is exploring.