Are those birds, maybe bees?
something is buzzing behind the trees!
it`s bubbling right underneath the surface,
it`s growing just beneath my knee,
if you look closer you too shall see
– (from “Painsluts, Vibrating Gardens & other Magical Toys” by Doria Sharra)
The history and social associations of embroidery are primarily tied to women, was never considered fine art, and was always thought of as a craft. For me, this made it the perfect medium to examine questions of masculinity and power structures.
-Eran Inbar
What kind of man?
Men and masculinity are such familiar markers that they have become “unmarked” according to culture researcher Peggy Phelan. All cultural systems, primarily language, see them as so absolutely natural that they need no marking, and certainly do not require being addressed as a discrete category, one that varies individually and across geographical and historical axes. If a female director wins an Oscar, for example, the fact that she is woman will be noted. But if a male director wins? That – goes unmarked. This is the case in every discipline: science, culture, politics, and economics.
But what kind of man is so natural as to go unmarked? Or more precisely, what kind of men? And how is masculinity expressed? How does it look (or how does he look)? In what fields are these concepts applicable? What is their history? These questions motivate the work by Inbar and Sharra in “Center Piece”, not exactly a centerfold or the central act, and quite deliberately an alliterative reference to peace and piss.
The theme that seamlessly ties the techniques, subjects, and different approaches in this exhibition presented by Sharra and Inbar is their particular attention to detail and subtle seductiveness. It interweaves elements of identity and affinity and links passion and adoration. It ties together celebrities and objects of desire such as Brad Pitt and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the most masculine men who appear on magazine covers and have decorated the walls of countless libido permeated teenage rooms. It is even evident in fine embroidery work that pierces through seemingly ultimate masculinity, literally cutting through its tough façade. This is also the case in works by Sharra, where men cultivate gardens of shaking vibrators masquerading as flowers, using playfulness and humor to dispel solemnity and taboo.
The needles Inbar employs, and the feathers Sharra uses in her paintings with teasing provocation, are representative of the oppositional world written about by Gilles Deleuze (as he examined the writings of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Marquis de Sade), because this world is “capable of containing its violence and excesses”. This violence and this excess are rooted in one of the most normative, humane, and ostensibly (or not) standard concepts: a contract. An agreement between people that encapsulates a wide range of desires to find a home, a partner, a stage, a helping hand, or just the clothes pegs or cucumbers.
Agreements enable us to fulfil our vision, to plaster it on the walls and galleries of our consciousness. But unlike standard legal agreements, the one presented by Inbar and Sharra is agreed on in total silence, a covenant born of irony, a twilight zone between seriousness and levity, between what is said outright and what may only be whispered about in hushed voices.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwuySablHdE
Moreover, this is a contract between sanctity and mundanity. This is made clear in Inbar’s central positioning of an altar, and the ceremonial tools and costumes in the drawings and paintings by Sharra.
The mask of masculinity is removed in this shared ritual, and when it is worn again it resists reunifying back into a single image. The performative sacrament allows Inbar and Sharra to deconstruct, stretch out, and direct many and multiplying forms of masculinity. For example, just like the scandalous photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe in his 1980 work “Man in Polyester Suit”, the embroidery, objects, collages, paintings, and drawings by Inbar and Sharra break out from a limited codex of hetero-normative masculinity, one that is aggressively Israeli in nature.
New options begin to germinate and spring up in the face of this militant, power-driven masculinity. Contrary to the official historical image of the halutz (pioneer) and then the sabra (native Israeli), of Srulik (a cartoon image of the typicaly Israeli boy) and then achi (Hebrew: “my brother”), this narrative focuses on those that didn’t spend their days out in the fields, didn’t wear tembel hats or helmets, didn’t wave about firearms or hoist the flag.
If you look past the flowers and behind the trees, as proposed by Doria Sharra, if you momentarily ignore the history of branding embroidery as a woman’s craft, as suggested by Eran Inbar, you will see that of the many images in this shared exhibition there are only men, their masculinity, and their many masculinities.
Curator: Gilad Melzer
Opening at noon Friday 02/06
12:00 O’clock
Yodaft st. 7, Herzliya