Gili Avissar | Tender Cut

Tender Cut, Gili Avissar’s solo show, comprises one single object: a tent, a temporary structure used as a home in nomadic or refugee situations. Installed in the center of the main display space of the museum, the tent is made of 400 strips of fabric, sewn together and hand-painted with thinned acrylic paint. It is a complete yet fragmented object, a structure made of segments resembling pieces of skin stripped from a living body, and, like many other works by Avissar, possessing human-like traits. The placement of the tent in the museum, as a space-within-a-space, creates a duplication; It echoes and presumably nullifies the building, but in fact, the tent needs the museum and seems safe within its walls. Is it a display space? A hospitality tent? A ceremonial hall, or a haven alluding to a disaster?

As a part of the show, Avissar has invited artist and lighting designer Omer Sheizaf to create a piece that would respond to the tent. The invitation is, by intent and pre-design, a call to interfere – Sheizaf’s light installation Crop and Makeup is positioned in the museum’s hallway, and, while it exists as a separate work, it interferes the movement of the visitors in the space, and affects the appearance of the tent.

Text: Smadar Keren, curator

Photography: Elad Sarig