Artspace Tel Aviv | עמותת 'מקום לאמנות' בקרית המלאכה

Semi-Noble 

Dalia Zerachia  

 Curators: Yair Barak   

On the one hand, Dalia Zerachia’s new exhibition presents earlier and familiar methods, based on ready-mades and objects that are appropriated and manipulated. On the other hand, Zerachia offers a different perspective on the past and a new sculptural presence. The artist’s basic assumption in her work is that we do not produce anything new. Just as a child learns language from a middle point (having been born to a world that already speaks, writes, and reads), so does she function within an existing space, one already premanufactured. The early 20th century taught us that art can also function through replication and secondary representations. The Dada movement demonstrated the use of ready-made and the act of artistic appropriation. Zerachia, whose studio is just as much a warehouse or archive as it is a workspace, also operates with what already exists. She draws in published books, sketches on old cloth napkins, sculpts with furniture she has found, and breathes new life into remnants and fragments. 

In “Seminoble”,  Zerachia circles a central axis, the storyline that provides the starting point for her exhibition. Abraham Zerachia, the artist's grandfather, was a highly regarded coppersmith and one of the founding generation of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. For years the figure of her grandfather and his artwork were a footnote in her biographical story, receiving little attention or appreciation within the family circle. Abraham Zerachia was born in Hasbaiyya in South Lebanon, then went north to study in Damascus where he learned copper hammering techniques under the tutelage of local experts. In 1909 Avraham Asher Bar Adon was sent to Damascus by Boris Schatz, the founder of Bezalel, to study copper work and become familiar with local workshops so that he may one day found a copper art department in Bezalel. Bar Adon met Zerachia in Damascus, who in 1923 accepted the offer from Schatz to become a teacher in the department. Zerachia created many copper vessels which he tried to sell in order to supplement his teaching income. These provide the central motif in the current exhibition.

Zerachia’s artwork conducts a sophisticated dialogue with the past and with the protagonist in “Seminoble”. The “Bezalel” aesthetic is strongly palpable; the tools used are traditional and of local Damascus origin, the motifs are recurring and always convey a story, biblical in scope. The materiality also suggests a focus on copper but quite quickly viewers understand that this exhibition includes more than authentic artworks, entailing a broad spectrum of visual references imbued with the faded memory of the Bezalel copper working traditions. Zerachia uses alternative sculptural materials, ones that simulate copper, are shaped like vessels, evoking the past. In fact the only original image is a beautiful historical photograph of Zerachia herself among the copper jugs.

Winnicott, the important analyst defined art as a game (the same reference used in his writings) and saw games as art. In many respects, Zerachia is an artist that operates within a playground; materials are present all around her; she pulls them off the shelves or out of trash piles. She weaves poetic sentences from broken fragments of words. This is action based art, one characterized by play. There is no virtuosity of drawing or extreme manipulation of materials but a sense and reasoning of connections of logic and of ideas. 

Two exhibition installations stand at the center of the space. Two libraries of sorts. These structures were designed to carry the diverse repertoire of works and provide scaffolding for their presentation. This system of shelves simulates a cabinet or archive. The works are exhibited on and within the structures while addressing them, becoming their extensions. Similar to the classic family structure, this genealogical tree spreads out branches in different directions while staying anchored to one central trunk. Zerachia’s family tree is rooted in the Levant, in the early days of a male-dominated artistic occupation of the early 20th century. But its arms reach up and out to different times and places, to a contemporary conceptual artistic approach that expresses a meaningful feminine voice.