For over a decade Etti Abergel has been constructing allencompassing
installations, engaging her audience within spaces
that exude quotidian sadness intersecting with intense mythical
pain. Like Arachne before her metamorphosis, Abergel weaves an
intricate and multivalent web, trapping sensations which allude
to forlorn childhood memories and their loss.
Abergel eschews defined plots or linear narratives. In their
stead she entwines vague fragments of distinct recollections and
traces the woof and the warp of their imprint upon mundane
objects such as yellow pencils; cheap kitchen utensils; plastic
bags from the open-air market or a pair of children’s chairs, which
coalesce into a makeshift cradle. A plethora of such everyday items
are suspended from the ceiling reminiscent of nomadic bundles or
ambiguous tactile clusters, impossible to fully unravel. At times,
the bundles become petrified within a casing of white plaster,
seemingly inanimate, but haunted by ghosts, echoes and distant
reverberations. At other times, the artist binds diverse objects
with bleached bandages, wrapping them tightly in a restorative
gesture that suggests healing, compassion and grace.
The familiar and the alienated cohere in Abergel’s fragile
installations, which she simultaneously constructs and
deconstructs. A bunch of brushes are coated with white plaster
knotted up with a thin rope, hanging in the air like a petrified
bouquet or a commemorative relic, immortalized and put to
death all at once, in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. The painter’s
tools are thus transformed into the very matter from which
her sculpture is assembled, in a complex and highly-expressive
metamorphosis. Displaced stylized shoes from an ethnographic
showcase are displayed in Abergel’s installations, marking the
disembodied footprints of broken-hearted immigrants from
far-off lands. A silenced, obsolete whistle, a shattered floor tile,
discarded domestic objects that have been rendered dysfunctional
and redundant convey profound human emotions of vulnerability
and pain, as well as the desire for consolation and hope.
The sculptural objects contained within Abergel’s installations
are closely related to the ready-mades of Duchamp and Picasso
(for example, the bicycle handlebar and seat that transform into
a bull’s head). Thematically, there is a close affinity between
Abergel’s work and contemporary art addressing memory, the
immigrant experience, trauma and “the absent body.” More
specifically, her art may be compared with that of Eva Hesse,
Mona Hatoum, Annette Messager and Doris Salcedo. Yet, while it
is instructive to view Abergel’s work within various art historical,
theoretical and thematic contexts, it is equally important to
note the specificity of her installations, their unique visual
language – in terms of both syntax and semantics – and their
profound personal and autobiographical sources and energies.
Indeed, Abergel’s oeuvre is imbued with an intensity that provides
her creative output with a sense of coherence and depth that is all
her own.
Etti Abergel weaves and unravels; clusters and disentangles;
bundles up and unpacks. She constructs her installations
obsessively, lacing woof and warp, “fabricating” all that has been
erased, re-collecting all that has been lost or forgotten. Like a
mythical Penelope, she oscillates between hope and despair,
creating art as an act of survival, creating art as an act of love.
Gannit Ankori is Henya Sharef Professor of
Humanities and former chair of the Department of
Art History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
She is the author of Imaging Her Selves:
Frida Kahlo’s Poetics of Identity and
Fragmentation (2002), Palestinian Art (2006)
and numerous articles and catalogue essays.
from: Installation Diary, Etti Abergel