Shai Zakai
Founder and director of the Israeli Forum for Ecological Art, multi-media artist Shai Zakai, will talk about a site specific installation at The Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World, Haldon Forest Park, Exeter (www.ccanw.co.uk) which is based on her 14 years’ project.
The ‘library’ is a collection of up-cycled boxes containing organic material - leaves, twigs and seeds - from 19 countries. Accompanied by stories and photographs and video, they record something of the imprint of humankind on the environment. The multi-media installation creates an intimate space to contemplate human nature. Engaging our senses of touch, smell, sight and sound simultaneously, this collection of mostly damaged nature highlights the daily effects of global warming set in motion by human beings, i.e., the loss of biodiversity, deforestation and human indifference.
To reduce carbon emissions and costs, the artists and the gallery decided not to ship the installation. Instead, they will show only what the artists can carry with them. Responding to Shai Zakai's invitation, local artists and environmentalists have also contributed recycled shoe boxes containing organic materials inspired by personal memories of the natural environment.
Shai Zakai is perhaps best known for her seminal work Concrete Creek – the reclamation of a polluted creek as an artwork, 1999-2002 – and describes ecological art as “one of the good ways I know of for mediation between the individual, the place and the decision-makers”. In defining the eco-artist, Zakai compares this role to that of “a doctor practicing alternative medicine, who would never offer you a painkiller, but would examine the body as a whole; or to a judge, who would send a transgressor to a rehabilitation program rather than to jail; to a philosopher who would always explore multiple versions and variations before he finds that singular insight; to ‘sublime nature’ that often invokes in its beholder magical sensations that are never quite deciphered; wishing to utter our admiration, we feel close to the place and it becomes so precious to us that we want to preserve it.”
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Shai Zakai: Part One Downloadable Video Podcast This is a QuickTime movie which can be played on iTunes and most Video MP4 players Right-click to save to disk (ctrl-click for Mac), or just click to play. NB: This is a large file (40Mb) and should only be downloaded using a broadband connection |
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Shai Zakai: Part Two Downloadable Video Podcast This is a QuickTime movie which can be played on iTunes and most Video MP4 players Right-click to save to disk (ctrl-click for Mac), or just click to play. NB: This is a large file (40Mb) and should only be downloaded using a broadband connection |