Naama Arad’s ‘Har Hazofim’ quotes the view from the window of the fictional Frank Lloyd Wright creation from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic ‘North by Northwest.’ A peach-toned silken curtain intervenes between our gaze and the Xerox copies pasted to the opposite wall on which landscapes can be seen. The paternalistic presidential visages of Mount Rushmore and the modernist architecture both see their material and ideological texture inverted in the most tender of feminist veilings. The title of the work refers to the mountain of the same name, and Israeli enclave in East Jerusalem that houses the Bezalel Academy of Art founded in 1906.
Paper collage on board with gold leaf frame, 30 × 25cm, 2009, courtesy: the artist.
A group of Christian saints in golden garb is collaged into a photo of four American astronauts in silver space-suits. The groups resemble each other through their shining metallic appearance, as well as through the circular borders around their heads provided by space-helmets and halos. Mir’s artistic work reveals analogies in the iconography of science and religion. Both produce paternal figures of identification, both have claims to power over human life and the Earth. At the same time, both saints and astronauts stand for the hope of something beyond earthly existence.