Dvir / Paris
Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Thursday: 11:00 – 19:00
Friday – Saturday: 12:00 – 19:00
Dor Guez, Watermelons under the bed, 2010, one channel video installation, 8 min, edition of 6 + 2AP
“I’m interested in these social junctions where art meets culture, history and politics,” explains Dor Guez. Defining his artistic practice as one of “socio-poetical action,” Guez’s creative process originates in social and anthropological research that functions as a “tool of visual expression.” His multimedia video and sound work employs contemporary and archival photographs. The latter derive from his personal “Middle Eastern Christian-Palestinian archive,” which he continues to develop.
Guez’s focus is the Christian-Arab minority in Israel. Using Israeli and Christian-Arab history for narratives of collective memory, Guez exposes the local complexities of this small ethnic group within a larger Muslim minority in a Jewish State. His work also invites viewers to identify with universal issues minority groups face within any society.
In 2010 Guez was nominated for the Gottesdiener Prize given by the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (Israel’s equivalent to the Turner Prize). His recent work called The Nation’s Groves, currently on view at the museum, explores the theme of Israeli nationalism. The project began with detailed research into the institution known as The Nation’s Groves, an agricultural body in the government that operated between 1950 and 1960. The institution’s significance to Guez has to do with the role of landscaping the topography of the new country (Israel was established in 1948). This included transforming Arab territory into pastoral forestland.
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