Shahar Marcus

Johanna and Me

Janco-Dada Museum

Opening: September 11, 2020

Curator: Raya Zommer Tal

Johanna and Me is a virtual video collage consisting of still photographs and a poem written by Hagit Grossman. Both the video and the poem were created during the recent Coronavirus and refer specifically to this period. Marcus, who frequently employs performative gestures using his own body, revisited images from a previous 2005 performance and paired them with Grossman’s poem to create this portmanteau work.

In an exhibition that projects isolation and loneliness, the artist is depicted in various moments within his home: naked, bathing, dressing, and eating alone, while the text recited by the poetess suggests a woman who is trapped in her home during the epidemic and yearns for an imaginary and unattainable lover/artist. The combination of the male body with the female voice of the poetess does not necessarily herald the possibility of a meeting between the two. In Johanna and Me, the merging of image and text implies several possible interpretations: Is this the poetess’s longed-for lover or is it simply a fantasy? Or does this merely represent the artist’s self-relationship and self-love?

The Janco-Dada Museum