You Belong Here
Moroccan-Israeli artist, Orit Ben Shitrit & Ethiopian-Israeli artist Nirit Takele have both experienced numerous cultural influences at a young age. At a time when questions of home, homeland and displacement loom large on the global landscape, these artists each channel their personal histories of mixed identity, culminating in a multi-media exhibition that collectively explores notions of self and belonging in a complex and dangerous world. Ben Shitrit and Takele both play against the experience of being "othered" to deliver genuine portrayals of everyday life and nuanced responses to the injustices and violence they've experienced or observed.
Orit Ben Shitrit is a visual artist, photographer, choreographer and filmmaker who focuses on themes of abstract systems of political, religious, and economic control, cycles of violence in the Middle East, and conflicted beings trapped in bodies. Her film work embodies the dynamics of disintegration and destruction impacting our current notions of self, safety and leadership with a visceral force, while her collages represent the physical and psychic impact of living in a world that would so easily disembody us.
Nirit Takele's bold, abstract shapes combine to form figurative portraits of members of the Israeli Ethiopian community, transcending the boundaries of allotted space. Having experienced prejudice from both of her homelands, her experience lends a more complex perspective to an otherwise simple act of depicting members of her own community going about their daily business. In this way, her figurative abstractions serve as constructs of a new and harmonious normal.
