ARTiculAction Art Review - Special Issuue Aug. 2016 | Page 59

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

Ophira Avisar: I feel I must be a hunter,

obliged to search and inquire constantly
for a sign. Any subject I catch in my mind
is floundering like a fish inside me and
inside the society net. This last net is a
burden. The society is forcing a definition
upon the fish/idea and we must fight for
air/art. This fight is first of all artistic but it
is political as well. When Petra and I go to
Tel Aviv sea shore and trace our marks we
are counting on collective memory and
political like propaganda. A temporary flag
that penetrates your mind.
Petra Paul: Yes, education is very

that even artists from Renaissance
accomplished the difficult task of
challenging a wide variety of cultural
categories of their age. Do you think that
artists should convey explicit political
message or just hint the direction for
change?

important, to understand things! If you are
not educated, you believe things, people
tell you and they are not right, you do not
questioning anything. I read an interview
with the political scientist Bassam Tibi
from Syria, he lived there till he was 18
and he said, he was anti-semitic before he
went to Germany, because he grew up
with anti-Semitism. For me art is
politically. The art react to our society, we
are not out of the system, the artist is part.
I always say, we do not change the world
or influence something when we paint
flowers. I am not against decorative
paintings, but it is not my part. On the
other hand there is a change, when you
have a look at for example Piet Mondrians
work. He started to paint a tree or a
church and he ended after getting more
and more abstract in abstraction. It is
another way of seeing. You mentioned the
Renaissance. A mark to public space
again. A question is, what does it mean,
when Francesco di Medici 1583 put
Giambolognas ”Rape of Sabine Women”
on a prominent place like Piazza della
Signora in Florence? It is a work about rape
of women. Follow the line till today, the
rape is in wars a form of discrimination of
first of all men. If you think about it, it is

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