Land
scape
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW
LandEscape meets
Eva Dabara Lives and works in Tel-Aviv, ISRAEL
As a multidisciplinary artist engaged in visual arts, poetry, performance and dance, I am interested in the interaction between images, text and the body. My work is basically minimalist, and my artistic endeavor is to create a critical view of the individual and social circumstances, sexuality, stereotypes and human relations. Using photographs, text, video, performance, objects and ready-mades I create a syntax which reveals a conceptual yet personal drive, merging the universal with my biography and the local reality I live within. Zigzagging between the different elements and mediums I strive to create a multi-layered experience of the senses while exploring an eclectic world of diverse existence which is at times dramatic, absurd, humorous, hallucinated, poetic or mundane. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator land.escape@europe.com
Tel-Aviv based multi-disciplinary artist, poet, performer and dancer Eva Dabara's work deviates from traditional trajectory to explore the interaction between images, text and the body: in her captivating audiovisual performance BLACK & WHITE that we'll be discussing in the following pages, she triggers both the perceptual and cultural parameters of the spectatorship, to walk them through multilayered experience. One of the most impressive aspects of Dabara's work is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of challenging the normative conventions of the performer-audience situation to create a critical view of the individual and social circumstances, sexuality, stereotypes and human relations : we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating and multifaceted artistic production.
Hello Eva and welcome to LandEscape: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and you studied Philosophy and English literature at Tel-Aviv University, art, photography and video at Camera Obscura and performance art at The Performance Platform in Tel-Aviv: how did these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, how does your multifaceted cultural substratum dued to your Israelian roots inform the way you relate yourself to art making? To begin with, apart from the university studies of English Literature and Philosophy which gave me a very broad perspective and outlook - I didn't really have a solid formal training in the Arts in terms of the traditional 4 years academic study graduating with a diploma, but rather annual courses I chose (although for 5 years altogether), and I'm happy about it as it helped me maintain a kind of freedom which is essential for me. Instead of detailing my background cultural roots which apparently