NIRA PEREG | TWILIGHT ZONES | תוספת שבת

This third solo exhibition of Nira Pereg’s work at the gallery was initially thought as scoring the opportunity to celebrate Sabbath, the mythical 2008 video. Nira Pereg documented then the installation of temporary barriers to prohibit all vehicular traffic on the eve of Shabbat in the ultra–Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem, establishing a boundary between the sacred and the profane. In recent years, as a real obsession, the artist has taken the habit of returning to the scene of the ״crime״ to capture the changes on the spot. De facto these back and forth movements have become a sequel and is supposed to take stock every 10 years and reassess the changes. In the ten years’ anniversary version it looks that the barriers, paradoxically, have become rickety and the attitude of the observant casual, but on the other hand the authorities have institutionalized the separation and the police in turn relays the very principle of prohibition of mechanized traffic. The ban has become eminently political, meaning that there is no longer any de facto separation between the religious and the secular. Retelling a story is always a new story, the video diptych shown, titled Theos & Krateo1 juxtapose two intersections that are being closed in anticipation of the Sabbath. A mere 1.5 km from each other, both locations differ in that the closures are performed by the two prevailing jurisdictions. In THEOS, the barricade is erected by civilian Orthodox Jews, while in KRATEO the barricading is executed by police officers in uniforms, which represents the state rule.
This key work becomes in the same time the occasion of a series of variations around the advanced notion of sculpture to the widened sense of the term as a form of resistance by reaffirming itself in the most diverse materials, while passing by all the ranges, which go of the neon, mineral, plastic, metal, maintaining at the same time links of fertile crossing with the video–sculpture, the installation, the performance, the ready–made hybrid objects. The title Tosefet Shabbat in Hebrew (meaning ״Sabbath Supplement״) is literally the idea of an extension of the video’s title but it also acts as a diversion to the halachic concept of ״adding the profane to the holy״ which means that the celebration of Shabbat lasts a little longer than the prescribed time, while the meaning of the title departs from the literal and means that it happens after the time is up, indicating disarray or urgency. The twilight zones, a free translation into English, can also characterize areas where two different ways of life or states of existence meet.

The leitmotif of the exhibition is the barrier, an increasingly common accessory, which is now blending into popular culture. Crowd control barriers act as a physical and psychological barrier, to demarcate ״no access״ zones. In the meantime, the pandemic arrived and we all found ourselves locked up. In the emptied public space, remained only the artifacts that serve to prevent us from moving freely. It seemed the more our public space was emptied of its inhabitants, the more artifacts were placed there to block us, like an empty stage, full of metal barriers, large stones, stop signs, some no longer in use, and red and white warning ribbons. These props, have become the new ornaments of our cities, an inflation of signs. Everyone has around him a symbolic barrier which keeps others at a distance, and which protects his integrity, his privacy. Humanity has been built by establishing thresholds. The idea is to refuse the importunate. There are the limits of the body, which we have no right to override without consent. There is the public and the private, the sacred and the profane. Nowadays, we set up barriers, we saturate the public space with removable metal barriers and in return we neglect all symbolic thresholds. The artist says in her own way that we cannot live with this generalized, encouraged, instituted dissociation. 

1. Etymology of the word theocracy originating from ancient Greek θεός (theos), meaning ״god״, and κρατέω (krateo), meaning ״to rule״.

Nira Pereg was born in Israel in 1969. She received a BFA from the Cooper Union, New York (1993) and MFA from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem (2000). She has been working and teaching in Israel and abroad ever since.
Selected solo exhibitions: DEPO, Istanbul, Turkey (forthcoming, 2021), Braverman Gallery (2021), LAX, Los Angeles (2018); Israel Museum, Jerusalm, Ticho House (2015); Prix Maratier –La Fondation promahj le musee d’art et d’histoire du Juda״sme, Paris2014) ); Center for Contemporary Art (CCA), Tel — Aviv (2013); The Cultura Judaica, Sao Paulo (2012); Kusntahlle DCsseldorf (2012); Hirshhorn Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington (2011); Tel — Aviv Museum of Art (2010); N.B.k, Berlin (2010).
Selected group exhibitions: arc en rêve centre d’architecture, Bordeaux (2020), Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong (2020);, ANNE+ ART CONTEMPORAIN, Paris (2019 ‘Videoland’, Kunsthal KAde, Amersfoot, The Netherlands (2019); DEPO Istanbul (2019); American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, USA (2019); Israel Pavilion, Venice architecture biennial, Venice (2018, 2015); National Gallery of Canada (2014); The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2014); Musee National D’art Moderne Centre Pompidou, Paris (2014); Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York (2013); Neuberger Museum of Art, NY (2013);

Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo (2013); The 9th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai (2012); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2012); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2010); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands (2010); ZKM, Karlsruhe (2009); Art Focus, Jerusalem (2008); PS1 Contemporary Art Center, NY(2006); The Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon (2004).
Selected publications and press: The Right to Clean, Exhibition catalogue, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem and The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University. Contributing writers include Gannit Ankori, Timna Seligman, Boris Groys and Christopher Bedford (201s); Nicolas Bourriaud, Joseph Cohen, Raphael Zagury–Orly, ״Abraham Abraham, Sarah Sarah,״ Prix Maratier –La Fondation pro mahj le musee d’art et d’histoire du juda״sme, (October, 2014). Kept Alive, Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Walter Koenig (2012). Mignon Nixon ,״The undiscovered country,״ ARTFORUM (October 2010); Leah Ollman, Art in America, June–July (2010); Boris Groys, ״The Hard Pulse of Regularity,״ Programma Magazine (May 2010);
Selected Public collection: Tate collection, London; Center Pompidou collection, Paris; Israel Museum Collection, Jerusalem; Princeton University Collection; Tel–Aviv Museum of Art collection, Tel Aviv; Goetz collection, Munich, GAM collection, Torino; SIP collection, Tel–Aviv; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario.