Dana Levy: Intrusions

Braverman Gallery is pleased to invite you to Dana  Levy solo exhibition “Intrusions”. 

Dana Levy’s multifaceted practice considers how historic architecture and sites embody lived experiences and change context over time. She often begins her projects with specific buildings, local people, and archives, creating works that delve into unique cultural histories and connect to overarching themes of place.Through symbolic imagery, Levy creates a haunting meditation on displacement, memory, and the passage of time.

In the gallery space, the main video work Mississippians is projected. Levy filmed the work in  Old North St. Louis Missouri. Levy visualizes the evolution of the environment in the wake of human absence, a surreal examination of architecture, urban planning, and impending ecological change. Animals roam the streets, yards, and buildings of the neighborhood. Levy worked with a bird sanctuary and brought eagles, owls and hawks to the neighborhood. Greenery spills out of windows, and the sky is visible through deteriorating structures as the urban fabric is overtaken by nature.

Adjacent to the projection of Mississippians, Levy presents a second channel that was filmed  in collaboration with community members from North St Louis, Missouri, USA. It incorporates narratives of the social history of the north side. It features scrolling text, architectural drawings, and maps complemented by interviews with historians, professors, a poet, and a hip-hop artist. They share oral histories describing the area, their relationships to it, and how it has altered over the years. These narratives highlight systemic racism, redlining, and disinvestment, shedding light on the environmental implications and future possibilities of urban renewal.

Around this work, four video objects are installed. “Drowned World” contemplates a future shaped by environmental collapse. Referencing J.G. Ballard’s novel, this piece juxtaposes natural elements with architectural fragments, urging viewers to confront humanity’s relationship with nature and its consequences. In “Intrusions”, Levy explores architectural space through time, investigating collective memories, and imagined ones. The artist intrudes into old photographs of a mansion in the Bronx, New York,, climbing through windows, standing on chairs, and brushing her hands against the walls where crowded bookshelves once stood, now bare. In her desire to experience history, not through reading about it but by moving through it like a time traveler, Levy creates a poignant connection between past and present.

In the Campbell House Project, Levy focuses on the histories embedded in domestic space. The Campbell House was the residence of St. Louis fur trader and entrepreneur Robert Campbell, built in 1851. Levy used two 1885 photographs of the home’s interior—the parlor and Robert Campbell’s bedroom.. In Levy’s multimedia work, videos filmed in 2020 are projected onto prints made from the photographs taken in 1885. Levy herself inhabits the same bedroom and parlor currently preserved in the house museum, fading in and out of the spaces as she interacts with the furnishings. The fastidious preservation of the Campbell House—due to the efforts of committed St. Louis residents in the 1940s—is an important aspect of the work. As her ghostlike presence moves in the space 135 years after the photographs were taken, viewers see how architecture can be activated through both the presence and absence of humans.

Through her diverse body of work, Dana Levy invites viewers to reconsider the ways in which architecture, history, and environment intersect to shape individual and collective identities. Her art challenges us to confront the past, contemplate the present, and envision alternative futures, emphasizing the enduring relevance of our choices in shaping the world around us. 

Dana Levy was born in Israel to Egyptian and German parents, she was raised in the U.S, Israel and the U.K. Today she lives and works in New York City. She earned her MA in Electronic Imaging at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art Dundee, Scotland and her BA from University of the Arts London: Camberwell college of Arts.

She was the 2019/2020 Freund Teaching Fellow at the Sam Fox School of Art in Washington University, St. Louis and the 2020 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Digital/Electronic Arts from The New York Foundation for the Arts. Other awards include 2017 City of Budapest talent Award 2013 Beatrice Kolliner Young Artist Award, 2010 Dumbo Arts Festival studio award, 2008 Young Israeli Artist Award.

Solo exhibitions include at Braverman Gallery Tel Aviv (2024), Eres Foundation Munich (2024) Saint Louis Art Museum (2021), Fridman Gallery NYC (2019), The Israel Museum Jerusalem (2015), Petach Tikva Museum of Art (2014), Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv (2012), and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery NYC (2010). She was part of the shows at Wave Hill New York 2023, the Berlin Biennale (2022), Videonale 18 Kunstmuseum Bonn (2021), C24 gallery NYC (2019), Screen City Biennale (2018), Kadist Gallery San Francisco (2017), Biennial of Contemporary Art of Cartagena (2014), Wexner Center of Art (2012), and The Bass Museum (2012).