Yael Meiry

In the exhibition Breathing In & Staying Out Of The Sun, Yael Meiry explores the similarity between the gallery space and botanical gardens as two spaces of display designed for aesthetic consumption. Both spaces involve collection and present their findings to visitors, who are captivated by them. They are also spaces of leisure—the garden is a museum of the living, while the gallery, in contrast, is understood in art history as a mausoleum, a cemetery. In the exhibition, connections are marked between these two spaces, between what is defined as nature and what is defined as culture, touching on the randomness, freedom, construction, artificiality, and order that characterize them.
One of these connections is found behind the scenes of the gallery: several plaster casts whose form is inspired by the metal frames in which projectors are placed. The casts evoke the act of framing, just as nature is framed into fenced capsules, controlled reserves of wild nature intended for display. During their time at Oranim and in the garden, Meiry directs their gaze toward the ground—the earth on which the garden grows—and collects from within it. In contrast to scientific classification that embodies hierarchies, Meiry’s collection is arbitrary and random, a discovery that begins with dwelling in the garden, a collection of treasures stemming from wonder—stones taken just as a photograph is "taken."

A parallel process occurs in the plaster sculptures in the exhibition. They were created inspired by free wandering in the garden, using a technique of material subtraction and addition; alongside working with a mold, the sculpture includes a study and examination of movement within it. Collecting stones continues Meiry’s preoccupation with the body—the stone as a limb of a rock that has detached from it. On a wooden pedestal in the space, small pinkish stones are seen. The stones were created through soft silicone casts and peach pigment reminiscent of skin color; an apparent genetic replication of the human body. In contrast to the power relations that characterize portrait photography, the photography of the stones—and the preoccupation with them specifically—attempts to escape the aggressiveness that characterizes the act of photography during portraiture.
For Meiry, the gaze at the stone, and at the private and collective history embodied in its geology, brings to mind a discussion of the concepts of "nature" and "naturalness" as normalizing ideologies—as an object that has a history on one hand, yet lacks a priori definitions on the other. This type of gaze is offered to visitors of the exhibition, as in the garden, a lingering gaze: to breathe in and stay out of the sun.

Kalanit (Anemone), 6:52
Installation view at Oranim Gallery and the work
Editor: Haviv Kaptzon
Photographers: Yuval Alon & Yael Meiry