Project Description
Dress codes: reveiling the Jewish Wordrob was chosen as the flagexhibition of 2014. With more than 10,000 garments, the Israel Museum holds the largest collection of Jewish costumes. Space as a mediator to art- On exhibition 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. Screen as a material screen as a tool to frame essence screen as a threshold 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. The entire gallery can be observed through a veil. It is a powerful cinematic effect, immediately defining a multi-dimensional experience, a journey through space and time. A silent group of figures, a community, wrapped thoroughly with traditional ‘bourkas’ stands beyond the veil. This unique entrance defines a space to understand idea of border and body through the actual movement of the visitor. Walking along the wall, under a spotlight ‘catwalk’ to the gallery, the visitors undergo instant transformation – from being an external spectator to becoming a part of the exhibition, a part of the group, a part of the display. 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. The result is a multi textured experience, as the visitor is gently guided to explore and sense the following issues: 01 – The ambiguity of these extraordinary garments: Clothes serving as definers of social identity while blurring individual, gender territories. 02 – Unveiling concealed meanings and hidden texts through detail, symbols, texture and designs of each cloth 03 – A thought-provoking variety of global encounters and geopolitical patterns defined and exposed through textile and fashion 04 – A glimpse into the complexity of relationships between adults and children as well as gender identity as portrayed through the garments and their individual stories. 05 – Time Travel, experiencing each garment as an eternal object, holding within its fabric distant memories and parallel worlds.
Project Details
Project Site: Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Curator: Efrat Assaf Shapira
Details: Exhibition Design and Installations
