We’ve Moved -> | Exhibition in the 25th Nidbach Series

A length of braided rope, thick at the top and gradually tapering downward; straight pins threaded through the surface of a wall as though it were fabric, paper, or skin; peeling wallpaper exposing its reverse side, dusted with reddish sand; a photograph of a deserted urban landscape, grainy and blurred in the black-and-white tones of a thermal printer. Nitsan Ben Zimra’s works capture fragments, remnants, and traces of an everyday reality, lingering vestiges of something that has vanished. Perhaps it has moved to the next street, to another country, or simply disintegrated. Through delicate, precise interventions, she breathes a fragile, elusive vitality and mystery into this flotsam, giving life to their desolation; being on the verge of nothingness.

Routine photography is a central anchor of Ben Zimra’s practice, an inseparable part of daily life, almost a reflex. During the recent period of upheaval and uncertainty, she began working with an instant-print camera—a simple automatic device that prints each image on thermal paper, much like a cash-register receipt. Her gaze is drawn to environments marked by neglect, poverty, and decay, and the photographs are spewed out slowly like a scroll of transient images destined to fade and disappear before long. The camera-printer produces images through heat, via a process akin to scorching, and its prints appear singed, laden with visual “noise” that only heightens their muteness and bareness. One of these photographs was scanned, enlarged, and reprinted, transformed and reincarnated.

Objects encountered by the artist during her photographic wanderings outdoors seek entry indoors, drawn to the warmth and safety of her studio. There, they are gathered into new configurations and granted new lives. The objects thus born-revived in the soft studio light, are bright, almost weightless, and subtly whimsical. In contrast, the thermal photograph taken outdoors, the largest and (visually) heaviest object in the exhibition, is dominated by absolute blackness and a harsh, dirty light. Its presence stains the surrounding objects, which nevertheless persist in their fragile existence despite the visual noise emanating from it. The charged, unbalanced dialogue between the different media manifestations constitutes the medium through which the exhibition emerges as a coherent statement, one that nonetheless threatens to fall apart.

Uriel Miron