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.
Lukas-Julius Keijser grants insight into the history of Dutch gay culture by shuttering the gaze with a curtain. Until today it is unusual to draw the curtains over windows that are facing the street in the Netherlands. To do so would be considered a sign that the inhabitants have something to hide. Gay bars constitute the exception, what draw the curtain to provide of a community unmolested by the outside gaze. The lettering applied to the curtain with bleach ‘Daddy’s Little Princess’ can simultaneously be read as a quotation of pop culture and as queer self-representation.