Oreet Ashery – We Die As We Live: Repeating Chapters on Mutual Equality

#4 min Tereza Rudolf, Oreet Ashery

10. 3. 2021

For years, humor, irony and sharp critique have all been important elements in the art of Oreet Ashery, arising from her direct experience of an artist living in a multicultural environment who is originally from a more conservative background, socially and religiously speaking. However, the performative events through which Ashery imprints herself into public spaces are only one part of a complex series on dying and leaving public life, Revisiting Genesis, through which the artist expresses her position on the still overlooked and badly articulated theme of death.

#38 Death, When You Think About ItProfileLGBTQ+

In the autumn of 2019, Prague’s art lovers had their first chance to see Oreet Ashery’s work, thanks to an exhibition curated by Edith Jeřábková for the Kurzor exhibition space (Center for Contemporary Arts). The exhibition took its title from a publication, How We Die Is How We Live Only More So,1 which contains the central ideas of the artist’s long-term thinking and work. Themes important to Ashery, who moves across media including video and photography as well as performative means of expression, include gender and social inequality, the possibility of establishing new societies and communities, and (artistic) practice itself. The twelve-part series Revisiting Genesis can therefore also be understood as a notional summarization of her interests and activities to date. All the episodes of the series are available online, but their institutional presentation contributes significant motifs. While in Kurzor, this meant a simple installation that only lightly complemented the central screening (which presented the entire series in a loop), the first installation of the project, in London’s Stanley Pricker Gallery in 2016 (which also took part in the production of Revisiting Genesis), Ashery also used other props, as well as the history and context of the space in question.

The central theme of death and dying is apparent throughout the series and Ashery is capable of touching upon many issues metaphorically but with surprising precision by transplanting the narrative into an imaginary near future or a slightly shifted parallel reality. However, we cannot leave out another layer of the narrative, which aims at the art world as such. The videos combine real human narratives of dying, based on interviews, with fictional narratives. In addition to strong displays of care in the form of an organization for elderly care and its female employees, these are also issues related to digital media, which allow for a particular form of “life after life”, even though in an entirely prosaic sense. In the videos, the artistic community is described as a kind of non-biological family trying to resolve the unclear situation surrounding the fictional character of Genesis, which cannot be described fully merely as the artist departing from the art world, though this is one possible interpretation. Community and a sense of belonging to a place is also underlined by the appearance of the character of Dora the artist. An exhibition called Dora (about the artist and designer Dora Gordine) preceded Revisiting Genesis at the same gallery by a few months, and both the videos and the original sculptural installation work with the sculptures of this artist. This figure represents the phenomenon of rediscovered women who were not as well established in their time as their male counterparts (or artists-partners). Her work also serves as an example of the ‘second life’ of the artwork, which is in the hands of the market, of new inter- preters and contexts.

In an almost therapeutic manner, Revisiting Genesis guides us through how the individual characters accept death, but it also reflects the position of those who care for the dying, as well as specific wishes and notions about the individuals’ own impermanence. The double role of the nurses is unsettling and often slightly critical – their role is not only to provide care and psychological support but also to offer software services related to dying and death. Through the hands of the nurses, these products offer the back-up of personal data and accounts, or their transferral to designated persons, and, most importantly, the creation of a ‘presentation’ through which the individual can relay an important message to their loved ones in the future. The relatively clear boundary between a crucial inauguration of a discussion on the topic of death and its immediate commercialization makes the project highly interesting. It under- lines the political and social conditions of dying which the artist speaks about when she says “we die as we live”, i.e. the poor in even greater poverty, exclusion and isolation.2

Despite the weight of her chosen theme, Ashery’s work contains a crucial element of humor and irony. It often seems that the manner of communication among the actors who represent the artistic community is her greatest critique of the art scene. Their lines are often banal phrases, empty and suspiciously speculative. Their capacity for joint action is scanty, and the question of who is to be the representative (future designated interpreter) for the dying or departing artist Genesis brings their biting individualism to the surface for a moment. The fact that various figures take on a variety of alter egos – an approach Oreet Ashery has used repeatedly3 – can lead to a staged catharsis and thus allow us to understand the position and emotions of the other.

 

Text: Tereza Rudolf

 

 

Image captions

All images | Oreet Ashery, Revisiting Genesis, video stills, 2016

  1. “How We Live Is How We Die Only More So”, Mousse Publishing, 2019.
  2. https:/ /elephant.art/we-need-to-talk-about-death/
  3. Including the alter ego of the orthodox Jew Marcus Fisher, with whom Ashery has worked for the last fifty years, e.g. in “Self Portraits as Marcus Fisher” (2000), or “Colored Folks” (2001), in which she used make-up to exchange genders and skin color with Shaheen Merali.
#38 Death, When You Think About ItProfileLGBTQ+CommunityDeathPoliticalVideo artPerformanceDeath, when you think about it

Tereza Rudolf

is an art critic and reviewer focusing on photography and contemporary art. From 2016 to 2022, she participated - in different positions - in the programme of the Fotograf Festival.

Oreet Ashery

is a London based, interdisciplinary visual artist. Her practice is socially and politically engaged, often takes place in public spaces or situations, and tends to include participatory and interactive elements. She frequetly uses a male character. These have included: an orthodox Jewish man, a black man, a Norwegian postman, a large farmer, a false messiah and an Arab man. Ashery’s work is relational and complex, and at the same time accessible and humorous. She exhibits, performs, intervenes and screens her work extensively in an international context (Liverpool Biennial, ZKM, Tate Modern, Pompidou Centre, Umjetnicki Paviljon, ...) and also context-responsive locations such as curators’ bedrooms in various cities, a men only religious celebration, Qualandia checkpoint, and a derelict fishermen’s hut.

#38 Death, When You Think About It

A third of the population never talks about death with their loved ones. The society of the global North has lost its natural attitude towards death. Through the ideal of infinite growth, consumer life, and the cult of eternal youth, death gradually became taboo. The presence of death has been delayed by society through a healthcare system focused on improving citizens’ physical condition, thus effecting the greatest possible delay to dying – not only in practice, but also within the collective consciousness of mainstream society. The importance and depth of the process of departure is reduced. One possible result is the suppression of fears connected to the end of life, which make it impossible to experience life in the present. For theorists of photography such as Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes, the medium of photography was itself a kind of death or its imprint. As Sontag points out: “Photographs state the innocence, the vulnerability of lives heading toward their own destruction, and this link between photography and death haunts all photographs of people.” The fragile line between death and life has been the subject of art since antiquity. What are the forms taken by the topic today? It might be difficult to go through all the layers of emotion that surround our cessation, but we will try to imagine the diverse moments of encountering death and the different perspectives one might adopt, with the aim, ideally, of accepting respect and gratitude for life, allowing us to perceive it in the present. The art of accepting death at that moment can become the art of living.

Editor’s Pics by Tereza Rudolf

#4 min Tereza Rudolf

Editor’s Pics by Tereza Rudolf

Fotograf zone Editorial picsFotograf Magazine

I’m putting this selection together on my phone. Every now and then, I switch to camera mode and try to photograph my children endlessly tunnelling through the sand beneath a beach umbrella. In much the same straightforward way, I’ve chosen a handful of favourite articles and artist profiles connected to themes of travel, tourism, family photography, and borders of all kinds—not just national ones. Consider this a reading and viewing list for journeys, or perhaps about journeys.

Ada Zielińska – Some Men Just Want to Watch the World Burn

#3 min Tereza Rudolf, Ada Zielińska

Ada Zielińska – Some Men Just Want to Watch the World Burn

#46 TourismProfileEnvironment

The contemporary tourist is either something of a cynic, a naive consumer of experiences or a constantly fleeing romantic. Ada Zielińska travels through various landscapes for her work, and her photographs contain a certain amount of both romanticism and cynicism. Naivety, in her case, was burnt up before it even approached the artist’s central motif – the automobile. The burning automobile, that is.

Sanaz Sohrabi – Are Images Ever Innocent?

#4 min Tereza Rudolf, Sanaz Sohrabi

Sanaz Sohrabi – Are Images Ever Innocent?

#41 Postdigital PhotographyProfileArchive

Although it might sometimes seem that way, photographs never exist in themselves. And this is doubly true of those made by machines or for archival or documentary purposes. As the art of Sanaz Sohrabi demonstrates, images (and particularly reproduced images) are part of often unwanted testimony embedded into dense nets of relationship. In her work, the artist then untangles these threads and reweaves them into artfully crafted rugs.

Uneven ground

#3 min Tereza Rudolf

Uneven ground

#37 Uneven GroundEditorialIdentity

Am I strong enough to abandon the tracks I know? To terminate dysfunctional relationships? These are some of the questions Kateřina Konvalinová asks in her text – hummed to the rhythm of a pop song fading out – which serves as a goodbye letter. Whether we are changing our relationships with people or the planet, our hesitation is a symptom of fear. Fear of stepping outside our usual terrain. But the other; the unknown is found outside our usual experiences and everyday paths. The focus of this issue and this year’s Fotograf Festival is the need to overcome fear; to take the first step and search out encounters on uneven ground.