Not To Be Used For Navigation
2014, Solo exhibition, Water Institute The Municipal Gallery, Givatayim
Talia Yemini's works of art are an expression of a constant search for a place in the world.
They continue a widespread human experience with a long history: the attempt to decipher the environment,
give it signs and references, and find the right direction to go to.
Can we directly decode the reality around us? Do we have a way to get to the truth? Is there such a truth? It seems that these questions have not yet found an answer. It may be irrelevant to ask these questions. Our conscious necessity of giving names, markings, patterns and stable facts is often discussed the history of Western philosophy, and received all kinds of explanations. Whether Kant postulated an essential form of recognition of space and time, and whether De Saussure imposed complete randomness on associations between words and their significance, one insight remains unchanged: we need order.
The Black spots that cover Yemini's maritime navigation maps have adual action: they cover and eliminate obsolete order, and at the same time seek to revive the mapping operation. These maps are out-of-date: In the past they were a faithful representation of reality, but only until a new island was discovered, until erosion has changed the shoreline, until a volcanic eruption confused the undercurrents. After years of serving us well, the maps fail us: a certain relationship between the real space and its visual representation has faded and we are left with a void. A black spot is continuing to spread and cover everything.
Navigation experience also appears in the floating Styrofoam works in the gallery. A wire extends between the coordinates of the pins' heads, turns back on itself, entangles back and forth. It has no solution and no direction, and yet it strives to give us a solution, to be like a piece of solid ground on which we put our feetwhich aretired of searches and partial responses. The squares oscillating in the air embody the daily chase after the delicate balance that we are missing so much: We're also walking on a fine line, swinging between fragments of meaning, looking for a safe haven.
Hagar Brill, 2014.