Liquid Desert / About The Project
The Liquid Desert Project is an artwork of unusual scale and scope, as well as in its appearance and modus operandi in the public sphere. It is a sculptural and architectural project that combines and embodies both physical and metaphysical dimensions. The Liquid Desert Project deals with the emergence and reflection of our hidden collective subconscious in the reality of our visible, physical existence, and in effect, the site acts as an allegory to a three-dimensional sculptural diagram of the psyche.
The Liquid Desert Project is an underground architectural site that is virtually located in the Negev Desert in southern Israel and consists of 49 hidden rooms spread across three underground levels. The different subconscious rooms and levels enable the artist to develop unique, unusual artistic and philosophical processes as well as unusual collaborations. Our collective subconscious sphere as a society functions as an invisible storage of life materials which have been repressed, denied, and exiled in the course of our personal and collective historical journey, while frequently surfacing as enigmatic and bothersome events secretly running reality. These life materials have been processed and translated into an active component of mute works of art which re-activate them in the form of physical works displayed in real venues as disturbing and complex sculptural installations, providing a non-verbal but sensual and physical experience.
The project is based on the principle of exposure/emergence/salvage and renewed synchronization of impacted life material frozen in time and its reactivation by means of the art viewer's eye, functioning as an active and necessary witness of an evolutionary movement related to the renewed emotional acknowledgment of the reawakened old life material. The viewing experience takes place via the physical consciousness at the actual exhibition scene. Thus, the Liquid Desert site offers a new and different mode of contemporary and advanced thinking in the form of a lively conversation with our world of shadows as a society and culture.
This parallel shadow world is represented virtually and functions as a metaphysical zone in the underground site located in Abraham's Path in the northern Negev Desert, which is a place of deep significance to the artist's nuclear family. According to tradition, this is the site of a historic dialogue between the human dimension in the form of Abraham and divine presence – as demonstrated by the change in Abraham's name – from Avram to Avraham, introducing the Hebrew letter ה (H) which symbolizes in the simplest and deepest sense the acknowledgment of God's presence in the manifest physical world. In this respect, the Liquid Desert Project deals with the movement of structures and the lively dialogue between the overt dimension of our life and the hidden one – the one which contains important information essential for the actual movement.
The virtual rooms of the desert site host the reflections of actual/physical art works from the fields of drawing, sculpture, sound and video – which are simultaneously exhibited in an encoded and partial manner in the visible public sphere, such as in international leading contemporary art museums. This creates a unique correspondence between a physical and visible field and its hidden underground and metaphysical counterpart. The actual works of art maintain an active conversation/resonance with the metaphysical site throughout the exhibition.
The project is a distilled and profound new step for the artist, who has been mapping the subconscious space – personal and collective – for years, using drawing, sculpture and sound, which act as fragments of a muted and necessary witnessing in that space.
ORIENTATION MAP
The work comprises four main levels that function as Multi-dimensional architectural structure from bottom to top.
level 0 Ground level
Represents the specific location in Abraham Path in the Negev Desert, Israel. It serves as a parallel space to a physical museum or public exhibition space in the world, which hosts one of the Liquid Desert rooms. During the exhibition time, a continuous resonance field is being activated between Abraham’s Path in the desert and the physical exhibition space, through unique sound works.
level -1 The Illuminated Objects [Process Rooms]
Concerned with changing curation processes and with the visual expression of various installation possibilities, later exhibited in museums and galleries around the world.
level -2 The Shadow of Objects [Process Rooms]
Concerned with the empty dark rooms that deal with the essence of the formation of ideas, bodies and forms.
level -3 The Inventory Code [Process Rooms]
Rooms are concerned with the inventory of subjects for different topics that Sasportas is leading with artists, philosophers, curators, authors and film directors.
Yehudit Sasportas is one of the most prominent and prolific Israeli artists working in the local and international art scene today. Her work is focused on site-specific installations, which include sculptures, drawings, video and sound works, and call for an intense sensory experience. Her installations have gone through a process of adapting and responding to the architecture of various museum spaces while forming into artworks that present a new way of reading architecture itself, as well as the wider cultural context it was created in.
