Hilla Ben Ari

Lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel

Artist statement

I’m a multidisciplinary artist based in Tel Aviv, creating mainly in video, sculpture, installation, and print. The central theme of my works is the female body, which serves as a metaphorical junction where private, social, and political conventions, restrictions and constructs are fused together. Raising questions regarding the body’s boundaries and limitations, I place the female figures in my video works in nearly impossible postures. Thus, the body – trapped between virtuosic flexibility and the painful strain of holding its posture – appears to be nearly frozen, as though it’s a still image. My corpus maintains an ongoing dialogue with the creative fields of theatre and dance performance, thus creating an intersection between visual arts and performing arts. In recent years, my practice has also focused on archival research. Exploring the work of forgotten Israeli artists who worked across a variety of disciplines. I’ve created a trilogy in tribute to the work of three different creators, highlighting the gender-related, mythical, and social aspects of their craft and the intergenerational connection I’ve formed with them. One chapter of the trilogy is a tribute to Nahum Benari, my great uncle – a writer and one of the founders of Israel’s Ein Harod Art Museum. In my video installation Na’amah (2015), I created a visual interpretation of a lost play he wrote in 1951, turning a marginal female character into a protagonist and subverting the content of the work to...

Artwork