The space, the period, the comma, the twenty-two letters

Winner of the 2021 Miron Sima Prize for the Visual Arts
Renana Aldor’s exhibition revolves around the library in the historic building of the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem. The library appears in Aldor’s work through various models of representation, as a spatial, conceptual, and emotional labyrinth.

The title of the exhibition was inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’s short story, “The Library of Babel,” which describes an immense, possibly infinite universe The vast library contains all possible combinations of the twenty-five orthographical symbols: twenty-two letters, comma, period, and space.

As if striving to regulate a state of disorder, to calm a state of unrest, Aldor shifts between different categories of action, and reorganizes the space by combining direct visual representations with symbolic and even conceptual representations.

In the video work, the library appears as an emptied, still spectral space in which only the figure of the librarian moves and operates The lingering, continuous, endless movement of the camera reveals the space of the library, but at the same time elicits a restrained tension, conveying foreboding overtones.

The installation, comprised by elements that appear modular and repetitive, the basic shape of which resembles “letters” that are constructed of connected lines and what appear like sculptural punctuation marks embedded in them.

Thus, not only does the exhibition address the concept of the library; it is literally made up of letters, words, and sentences, which converge and disperse in the space, alternately constructed and deconstructed.

Excerpts from the Committee’s Comments:
Renana Eldor is a video, animation, sculpture, and installation artist. In her fascinating works, she orchestrates places, objects, and human actions, both analytical and fantastic, furnishing viewers with an experience of beauty, imagination, and inspiration.

At the heart of the exhibition, proposed by Eldor, is a film showing an unidentified woman performing various actions in the library at the historic building of the Jerusalem Van Leer Institute, which was opened in the 1970s, and whose design has not changed since. In an era of extreme paradigmatic shifts in relation to the physical spaces containing bodies of knowledge and in relation to the human body, Eldor proposes to linger in a place that is a “nature reserve,” rethink it, and feel it as a living entity. The countless bodies of knowledge and fields of research, embedded in the books that stand side by side on the shelves, transform the library, which stars in Eldor’s cinematic choreography, into a pulsating, surprising, and eventful body.

Prize committee: Sharon Balalban, Sally Haftel Naveh, Aya Miron