Yael Meiry

Yael Meiry presents a new solo exhibition as part of the 2024 Indie Photography Prize, featuring photography, sculpture, and video. These works were created through an observation of the processes and changes the body undergoes, alongside their representation in medical photography. Collected images underwent a mapping and material re-coding, moving back and forth between photography and three-dimensionality. The gaze focuses on transformation as it operates on two levels: the external physicality of the body alongside internal occurrences hidden from the eye. The images evoke the discomfort of existing within the body's shell, the desire to look beyond the layer of skin that envelops us, and the possibility of imagining the various parts that compose our bodies. The creation of life, alongside a scar that may never heal, connects healing and annihilation.
The direct gaze, intimate and exposed under a harsh flash, moves very close to the subject, revealing every minute detail: body hair, an air bubble within a concrete cast, the peeling of sandpaper. The act of photography becomes almost invasive, reaching as close as possible and clinging to the outer envelope. In this way, it parallels a surgical process that begins with the imaging of an organ and ends with cutting through the human shell to reach the depths.

Three photographs of fabrics appear in the exhibition, featuring patterns taken from various hospital sheets. The hospital logos have been removed, and the fabric reappears as a long strip connecting ceiling and floor. Images of cuts and injuries resulting from invasive procedures are displayed alongside photographs of plaster, concrete, and silicone casts created from various medical documents. The works climb over and cover one another, revealing only a portion of the injury while wrapping it in another image.
In a video work, also partially covered by a photograph of a scar, an orchid flower lies on its back and takes slow breaths—perhaps its last, perhaps its first. Within the space, a tidy stack of rectangular plaster casts is positioned, responding in three dimensions to the search for findings in medical imaging.
This exhibition continues Meiry’s preoccupation with issues concerning the perception of the subject within transitional spaces, situated between the physical body and gender identity. The circular action of taking an image and transferring it between different states of matter and material characterizes the works, connecting the existence of objects in reality with their exposure from their hiding place, deep beneath the body’s protective layer.

Orchid, loop
Editor: Timna Perez