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.
Produced in the framework of HaMakom / Art section
Berlin based Curator, Udo Kittelmann, January 2023
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.
The work comprises four main levels that function as Multi-dimensional architectural structure from bottom to top.
A PROPOSAL BY THE ARTIST YEHUDIT SASPORTAS
FOR THE POMPIDOU COLLECTION / PHOTOGRAPHY DEPARTMENT
The Archeology of The Unseen, Liquid Desert
Solo show, Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven, Germany
Cad-Ot (Vessels-Letter) no. 2, 2019
70.4x50.8 cm, Archival pigment print
Liquid Desert project, Chapter 2
Sculptural process / Recording Time
Fragments of original graphite drawings
photographed in long exposure as one assemblage.
The Cad-Ot (Vessel-Letter) series, part of Yehudit Sasportas's Liquid Desert project, serves as an essential chapter within this extensive body of work.
These works describe a series of transparent clay pots that resemble ghosts and deal with the subconscious space of drawing. Inside the body of the pots, there are additional smaller pots that carry sound bodies, letter shadows and drawings. The series of the hand-made pots were placed near the artist's studio window in Tel Aviv, for the purpose of drawing and photographing the work Kelim, which is characterized by an eternal waiting dimension, existing outside of time.
The original drawings were physically torn and reassembled in a way that hides the details of the repair, which creates a subconscious space that acts as another step in the operation of the Liquid Desert site in the Negev. The work deals with the disappearance of time and the disappearance of the object from the space of existence which creates the presence of shadow traces as an intermediate space. Cad-Ot acts as an image of a mute vessel that is on the verge of dissipation on the one hand and appears in its equally renewed form on the other.
To download the work as PDF file click here or the image below.
70.4x50.8 cm
Archival pigment print
Liquid Desert project, Chapter 2
About Yehudit Sasportas
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 calls 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.
Her sculptural installations deal with a fascinating correspondence taking place between subconscious materials, unspoken and unseen, and the way these layers of information activate conscious areas across the surface.
Sasportas represented Israel in the 2007 Venice Biennale, and has presented more than 17 international solo exhibitions during the last decade, in venues such as The Archeology of The Unseen, Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven, Wilhelmshaven. Germany, 2020. *Rifts Of Absence, Villa Schöningen, Potsdam, Germany, 2017. HAMAKOM, GL STRAND Kunsthalle, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2016. Seven Winters, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel, 2013. HASIPUR – The Story, Herbert Gerisch Stiftung, Neuemunster, Germany, 2010. *The Clearing of the Unseen*, DA2 Domus Atrium, Salamanca, Spain, 2009. The Laboratory, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany, 2008. *By the River*, Matrix 200, the Berkley Museum of Art, San Francisco, USA, 2002. The Carpenter and the Seamstress II, Deitch Projects, New York, USA, 2001.
Yehudit Sasportas is a senior professor at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in the Department of Fine Arts. She has been teaching in the BFA and MFA Programs since 1994. She works simultaneously in Berlin and Tel Aviv, with a high level of international professional commitment and involvement.
To download Yehudit Sasportas CV click here or Sasportas' portrait image.
