ARTiculAction Art Review - Special Issuue Aug. 2016 | Page 46

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Dalia Smayze

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P etra Paul
O phira Avisar
Petra Paul lives and work in Vienna and Ophira Avisar lives and works in Tel Aviv

S

ince we met on October 2015 during an
exhibition of Israeli graphic art at
Hamakom in Vienna, we work together. We
made some films and performance. Ophira Avisar is
a multimedia artist. She uses various materials and
many disciplines. Everything around her can
become art. She invented a theatrical/artistic
language in which she is drawing a story with a
participation of non speaking actors. Another type
of works is drawing moving actors or dancers on a
transparent sheet. Her works deal a lot with
femininity, dignity, and freedom.
In photography Petra Paul plays with gender roles,
with masculinity and womanliness to show the
construction of both. She critiques gendersereotyping, sexim and patriarchy. She also uses
photograph and the medium film for her work
against racism, anti-semitism,... She uses her
menstual blood and makes abstract, monochrome
pictures, showing the abjection.
We are both feminist artists and do a lot of work
against racism, xenophobia, anti- semitism,
misogyny. We have to prohibit discrimination
based on any grounds, including sex, gender, color,
religion, ethnic, disabitity, age, social origin,
language or belief. Education is an important part
for (or to learn) acceptance and tolerance as well
as awarenss-rising. We are for peace, for respect,
for equality, for solidarity... and we use this words
in different ways, in film as well as in our
performance. Our work is also asking questions
about the male dominated public space. It is also
about sustainability. When we use the beach of Tel
Aviv as a drawing ground, we do it being aware to

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the constant erasing of the waves. We can write
and rewrite on this "canvas".
The current co-work starts from findings of both of
us in Tel Aviv. Petra Paul a lot of photos, and a
book. So she made a fictive story about a student
of architecture, Chawa Lieber. ”Architecture is My
Life” is a multimedia work, she made with this
photographs. There are some true stories told by
this work: Aron Menczer and the ”Children and
Youth Aliyah” and the ship Atlantic. Chawa Liebers
grandmother Rachel fled at the age of 6 with the
help of the ”Children and Youth Aliyah” 1939 to
Palestine. Grandfather Chaim escaped 1940 at the
age of 10 on board of the ship Atlantic form
Austria.
Ophira Avisar made the series ”Belong Don't
Belong”, after finding in the street a book about a
city somewhere between Poland and Ucraine. She
took some photos from the book and added a
feminine figure to each of them. Selfdefinition and
belonging are dynamic. They are contrarian to
environmental political and social conditions. The
people you belong to is also dynamic and
contrarian. You choose and rechoose. Our
definition is context dependent these works (Petra
Pauls Chawa Lieber and Ophira Avisars belong
not...). Are going to be co-exhibited at Kuenburg
castle in Lower Austria on October 2016. Working
on three new films. One deals with the combination
male/war. And the other two deal with peace.

Petra Paul and Ophira Avisar