Ilit Azoulay: No Thing Dies

Israel Museum

June 3 - December 2, 2017

No Thing Dies

Ilit Azoulay’s  ‘No Thing Dies’ arises from the depth of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The museum was erected in 1965 with the belief that it would help embed the cultural identity of the young state. ‘No Thing dies’ looks into the social layer that underruns this process for the past 52 years and perhaps shows how it sustains the illusion of a dialogue with ‘the other’ Middle-Eastern cultures.

During three years, Azoulay spent most of her days in the storage rooms of the Israel Museum, reviewing its collections, and interviewing various curators, archivists and conservators. She recorded these conversations and slowly discovered the many artifacts that never were publicly exhibited, along with stories about their original purpose, their journey to the museum, and the challenges of their preservation and display.

These stories revealed the deep involvement of the curators and conservators to every artifact of their collection. The selected objects were photographed, analyzed, classified and eventually created an image bank which, to some extent, reflects the invisible life-long labor of those preserving, researching, restoring, archiving, etc. While recent surveillance technologies, similar to Azoulay’s photographic technique, are working at narrowing the gap between image and data, Azoulay’s composite images are instead re-inserting uncertainty, mystery, and complexity.

‘No Thing Dies’ draws inspiration from the tradition of Persian miniatures books that were ordered by the ruling monarchs and praised his name and deeds: a sort of early propaganda, taking place in salons and courts. While her work too, was commissioned by the museum Azoulay’s images, seem to create surreal and sometimes theatrical scenes stressing the duplicity of the Museum.

Curated by Noam Gal.

Visit the exhibition on the Israel Museum’s website

 

 

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2017

2017

2017

2017

2017

2017

Ilit Azoulay, Vitrine no. 1: Under the surface only the mereness of things could be seen, 2017, inkjet print, gold leaves, 154 x 116 cm

Ilit Azoulay, Vitrine no. 2: New head: when he made the wrong movement he didn’t know what harmony he tore, 2017, inkjet print, gold leaves, 161 x 122 cm

Ilit Azoulay, Vitrine no. 3: Dreamtime. All this and more he had seen while asleep, 2017, inkjet print, gold leaves, 170 x 150 cm

Ilit Azoulay, Vitrine no. 4: (Take, for instance, this) true story, 2017, inkjet print, gold leaves, 142 x 120 cm

Ilit Azoulay, Vitrine no. 5: Neither dream nor riddle, 2017, inkjet print, 99 x 70 cm

Ilit Azoulay, Vitrine no. 6: It is impossible to explain how suddenly everything stood still, 2017, inkjet print, 230 x 150 cm

Ilit Azoulay, Vitrine no. 7: Cover story, 2017, inkjet print, gold leaves, 193 x 150 cm

Ilit Azoulay, Vitrine no. 8: Turkish Textile, 2017, inkjet print, 257 x 73 cm

Ilit Azoulay, Vitrine no. 9: The return of things that are no more, 2017, inkjet print, gold leaves, 214 x 150 cm

Ilit Azoulay, Vitrine no. 10: Cover story (late), 2017, inkjet print, gold leaves, 257 x 120 cm

Ilit Azoulay, Vitrine no. 11: On the most beautiful thing in the world , 2017, inkjet print, gold leaves, 104 x 65 cm

Ilit Azoulay, Vitrine no. 12+13: For unknown reason, the place they took, empty, 2017, inkjet print, gold leaves, 130 x 179 cm

Ilit Azoulay, Vitrine no. 14: One may ask: how, for what principle, does the world persist?, 2017, inkjet print, gold leaves, 174 x 136 cm

Ilit Azoulay, Vitrine no. 15: Contemplating, what did he see? The beginning, preceded by nothing?, 2017, inkjet print, 168 x 149 cm

Ilit Azoulay, Vitrine no. 16: Remembered from that journey was only this, 2017, inkjet print, gold leaves, 131 x 101 cm

Ilit Azoulay, Vitrine no. 17: The life in her is limited to that side only, 2017, inkjet print, 138 x 98 cm

Ilit Azoulay, Vitrine no. 18: Before she reaches the ground (still mid-air) one can see that her neck is broken, 2017, inkjet print, gold leaves, 125 x 77 cm

Ilit Azoulay, Vitrine no. 19: Imagine that only one person could see the mereness of things, 2017, inkjet print, gold leaves, 117 x 80 cm

Ilit Azoulay, Vitrine no. 20: All sorts of sights went wrong like a great catastrophe in a glass storage, 2017, inkjet print, gold leaves, 157 x 121 cm

Contact

Visit

Sunday

Monday

Tue – Thu

Friday

Saturday

Closed

By appointment only

11:00 – 16:00

11:00 – 14:00

Closed