Space as a mediator to art- On Exhibition Design and Installations

A curatorial spatial design provides a significant synthesis for representing art and experiencing a unique narrative along it. The space becomes the material of a curation regardless of the art itself. Understanding researching and finally composing space into a singular experience has been a major goal throughout my projects. It has enriched my and molded my ongoing multidisciplinary research of various design fields as urban environments, technology, art and media into large scaled installations.

My most recent exhibition, ‘Dress Codes’, is now showcased in Israel Museum, Jerusalem. It has received much attention from both local and international press, a beautifully designed stage for over a hundred individual garments carefully selected from the vast collection in the museum’s archives.

The exhibition reexamines clothes and their function – by portraying both their obsolete physicality alongside their role as a multi layered representation of cultural, social, and critical territories.

The space is designed to entice the visitor to experience a physical, text-less journey in which complex narratives can be sensed and exposed alongside the display.

The exhibition’s structure is cleverly defined by transparent and translucent walls enabled me to frame ideas inside a plane and simultaneously generate a layered and non territorial space. A system of large scaled transparent walls was created to frame the core of each event. 32 units of double layer  transparent and translucent walls form a modular and lightweight mechanism of space dividers.

The light structures enabled me to frame ideas inside a plane and simultaneously generate a layered and non territorial space.

Light and suspension

By combining light and fabric, the double layered structures I carefully created underline questions with the use of objects, the relation to the body and texts hidden between the fabrics.  The transparencies expose layers of information and gradually reveal the entire exhibition from any given position.

Transparencies and light are used as definers of time, of space and of sensing inside-out body relations.

To highlight the infinite, ingenious details of the garments, objects are displayed in a huge observation table enabling an opportunity to intimately observe these ornate objects.

A 65 sq m table sculpts the centerpieces, a sudden meeting in a city piazza, inviting the visitor to enter and again be part of the event.

The extraordinary butterflies, one of the exhibition’s highlights, captures time and beauty in a 2D display reflecting the subtle borders a fine piece of cloth creates on our bodies.

The exhibition stretches over 1000 square meters, transforming the gallery halls into five different events. Each section unveils questions regarding the very essence of the garments, their functionality, their origin, their meaning.