ARTiculAction Art Review - Special Issuue Aug. 2016 | Page 51

Petra Paul & Ophira Avisar

ICUL CTION
C o n t e m p o r a r y

A r t

R e v i e w

Special Issue

make also objects, like ”Uteri Ballet” or
”The Tampon Dancing Stars”. I started to
make film as well as performance. I work
also against racism, anti-semitism,… for
tolerance, for peace. In photography I took
different colors of the skin, or I put Osman
Masouds (from Sudan) and my face
together. Or I made a film ”Against
Terrorism” with peace photographer
Abdulrab Habibyar. Will make another film
together with Abdulrab, Fanny Kafka and
Wasil Faizi, which will deal with the
feelings of a refugee. I often work with
humor and this is a point, which connects
me to Ophira. Our society is getting much
more right-wing. This also includes more
racism and anti-semitism. In Poland and
Hungary the government is right. This
means also censorship in journalism and
art. I always try to find an aesthetic way, a
own aesthetic language, to work with all
this subjects.
Multidisciplinarity is a key feature of
your approach, that coherently
encapsulates photography, video and
performance, revealing an
unconventional still consistent sense of
unity. Before starting to elaborate about
your production, we would suggest to our
readers to visit
http://petrapaul.beepworld.de in order to
get a synoptic view of your multifaceted
artistic productions: while walking our
readers through your process and set up,
we would like to ask you how did you
develop your style and how do you
conceive your works.
Ophira Avisar: Being a multidisciplinary

artist is a natural evolving of these times I
think and also a part of my choice to be
"citizen" of all arts, of all times and of
many points of views. My patria is painting
and drawing. But I go to visit and even
immigrate from language t o language or
even to no language at all as in my work

"Rishumon", in which I draw and erase a
story of a woman on a blackboard and
there is an actress that lives in my
drawings story. I created, and directed the
show.
Petra Paul: We aways talk a lot via

messenger, we call each other. Since we
met I was two times in Tel Aviv-Jaffo, will
fly back there soon. We are very quick in
thinking and working. It is a really
phantasmic exchange between us. We
met and we said, we have to work
together. We act and react very good.
Some things are planned, but we are also
free to change something. We are
spontaneous. The film ”FOR…” for
example. I wrote the words ”for tolerance,
for peace…” for ”Transformation” on my
computer and translated it to hebrew.
Ophira corrected it. Then we put the words
with a projector to parts of our bodies.
Then we made this film, which was not
planned.
For this special edition of ARTiculAction
we have selected Transformation, an
extremely interesting collaborative
project that our readers have already
started to get to know in the introductory
pages of this article. This performative
work project is a successful attempt to
force the viewers' perceptual categories,
inducing them to question the
construction of masculinity and
womanliness. When walking our readers
through the genesis of Transformation,
we would like to ask you what is the role
of chance in your process: how much
improvisation is important for you?
Ophira Avisar: "Transformation" is a

collaboration between the two points of
view of Petra and me. It is an artistic
action that involves a natural change of
terms. The old question "what is it?" is
being dealt here using paint, object, and

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