Hansen | הנסן

In this multi-screen video installation, spanning two floors of the galleries of Hansen House and the Mamuta Art and Research Center, Sharon Balaban reexamines the body in relation to its surroundings. The exhibition, composed as a video lexicon, reconstructs the body in the domestic sphere. “I am a domestic flaneur,” Balaban says of herself. Unlike the European male flaneur of Baudelaire and Benjamin, who has the leisure to get lost in the city and to experience it, unrestricted (an image that has influenced perceptions of photography, and art more generally, in the West), Balaban wanders within the private space and meditates upon daily activities that create a spatio-temporal framework that is difficult to escape. The product of this observation is a unique body of works, through which Balaban proposes an unconventional domestic practice – visceral and sensual on the one hand, absurd and full of humor on the other.

In the exhibit, Balaban creates a deceptive viewing experience: the impressive images undermine conventions through the ironic use of both language and materials that are associated with the circumscribed activities of an efficient daily routine. The photographer’s gaze reveals hidden dimensions in these day-to-day materials, while her female body interacts directly with them. Contrary to the modernist attempt to turn the social order on its head, Balaban works within it to create personal rituals of poetic subversiveness and self-irony. The upper space of Hansen House functions as a large-scaled hall of sorts displaying four of the works from the exhibition, while the Mamuta galleries on the lower level constitute a labyrinth-like structure containing eight additional works that create a meeting between the ordinary and the sublime.