NOA TAVORI

Vanitas Vulgaris \ The Readymade Centennial,Haifa Museum Aug- 2013

Noa Tavori

Curator: Ruth Direktor

 

 

Noa Tavori arranges household objects as a backdrop of afamililar settings. The viewer is not sure what is so familiar and what is so disturbing -the objects,the atmosphere the setting? By replicating the familiar and almost boring setting, Tavori creats defamiliarization and distance. What seems homelike and insignificant when it appears one time, becomes thereatening when it appears twice and even more frightening when it becomes clear that the threat lies within what is close and familiar.The two-fold arrangement of the objects seems to ask to suspend the moment while also intensifying it.The inanimate collapsing nature gradually accumulates into a portrait of a female figure, which generates the event and drives the stories and the enviorment.

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Akfrsis\ 'Duet' by Noa Tavori

 

She was here just a moment ago, You can still smell the cigarette she put out in the ashtray, her garment lying on the floor, you can almost feel her presence in the air. Who is she?

One look a little bit more to the right reveals the fact that she is not alone. The same murky dressing-table, the same mashed cigarette in the ashtray, smeared lightly by lipstick.

Here, you also have a big round mirror, enlarging, does not overlook a single wrinkle. A second look finds the same mirror on the first table, round, enlarging, in the same place and angle.

I recheck the table, maybe something on it will give away any details:

A round mirror, as already told, an ashtray with one cigarette,

Smoked entirely and mashed, a small saucer with an outmoded chip hair-clip on top of it, black and pearlish, with sparkling  flowers pattern.

Could belong to a certain grandmother, or a young floozy with bad taste. Go on looking, on the right side of the mirror a thin crystal glass, decorated with sand splash, on its rim a thin gold line, in it lies three or four black hair-pins, the type that ballet dancers use to pull their hair into a bun. Also fits a conservative grandmother hairdo from the last century. Also inside the glass, a chip gold chain, coarse links, hanging on the rim of the glass, half in half out, oozing towards the table, and a used light peach lipstick.

Next to the glass lies a single earring, its stones sparkling, even though they are made of plastic, or chip glass tops. Where is the other earring? Got lost? Maybe she forgot to take it off and it is still hanging from her ear?

Last lies beside the earring a small rectangular carton box. According to the drawing I can tell it is a nylon stockings box. The transparent window shows an empty box. The articles and my careful gaze at them do not help me decide, is she young or mature? What is she doing here, or in general?

Maybe she’s a dancer, actress? changes before the show, making up quickly. Maybe she’s just a hooker, smoking a quick cigarette between two customers. Her bra is also hanged here, white, delicate.

Damn, the same bra also on the other table, come to think of it, maybe she is two?

A second, third and fourth look reveal the differences: in that one the lace is thicker, the shoulder strap is thinner. This is easier on the brain. They aren’t completely identical after all. Above the table hangs a small silver- framed picture. A picture can be useful to me, a photo is worth a thousand words, but here there are a thousand stars or more. In the center they are crowded and white, and in the margins they are less, darker. Like a supernova portrait, without a time or place. I’ve lost  the track.