Gallery talk at Benyamini Center: Friday, 3/5/24 at 11:30
Closing: Saturday, 1/6/24, 14:00
Looking at the works of Farid Abu Shakra in the exhibition GROUND indicates the area in which he operates, as an artist who is not afraid to face the issues of being a stranger as a Palestinian living in Israel as well as the patriarchal traditional society in which he lives. Like geological research, Abu Shakra deciphers the different layers of the concept ‘ground’ as agricultural implements that become almost cult objects while creating a fundamental connection between his works and labored craft. The labor is expressed in carving wood, stones set in metal , embroidery, piercing, and molding earth. Like in agricultural (ploughing and sowing) these actions require Sisyphean work, precise and repetitive, with excellent skill, a fundamental understanding of the material and intelligent hands.
To be a Palestinian artist living in Israel, focusing on land, turns most of the focus to the obvious issue of identity, as well as the conflict between two societies – Palestinian and Jewish, however, Farid Abu Shakra as an artist, manages to avoid the superficial labelling and shows an exhibition that goes far beyond: he deals with formalistic aspects of the relationship between the artist and his material, hand intelligence and the selected material: wood, earth, metal. In addition, the exhibition deals with the beauty of the traditional, giving it a new meaning. All this does not blur the questions of identity, but strengthens them because above all the exhibition deals with the humane, with compassion in general, with art that represents the humane, and the human, whoever he is on earth.
