Galerie Mezzanin

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