The stories originate in different parts of the world—from Israel to the West Bank, Syria, Bosnia, Colombia and Austria. Although they deal with biographical experiences, the works don’t present direct testimonies, but touch upon the crisis of testimony, and its inability to reflect an all-encompassing historical truth. The performativity of the testimonies offered by the artists of “Prolonged Exposure” represents an abandonment of the need to represent the real in a conventional manner, and an attempt to construct a new reality.

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Role play and a reversal of gender relations are also the themes of Lana Čmajčanin’s, Female President. Standing at a podium, the young Bosnian artist reads the testimony of a woman who was raped during the 1990s war in Bosnia. The painful, sad text of a victim is read in an assertive demagogic style usually reserved to politicians who try to incite their audience. Reading out the victim’s testimony, a text which is usually read in discretion or not heard at all for fear of exposure, provides a voice for those who remain unheard, but also exposes the way in which politicians exploit the pain of others for their own gain, as well as the gender division common among victims and victimizers. In speaking in the voice of the victim but in the style of a politician, the artist takes upon herself both roles: of ruler and ruled, alluding to the intricacy of political art which employs the life materials of real people.

Extract from Prolonged Exposure exhibition guide

Curated by Maayan Shellef

Online curatorial text, 2011
English

Online article about exhibition, 2011
English