OFRI CNAANI
Lives & works in New York (United States) Very active in: 90s, 2000s, Current decadeRepresentative galleries:Pack
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Video Art Works
Both Members of This Club (2002)
In my work I use two mediums, video and drawings, challenging in both accepted notions of domination, feminine bodily experiences, and spatial awareness.
My large scale architectural video installations expose the performative potential of cities and focus on the idea of 'knowing' space physically and visually. The installations use architectural elements and video projections to create unfamiliar experiences within familiar physical spaces and challenge the conventions of spatial consciousness. Through video manipulation ceilings, floors, and walls change scale and location altering the spectator's physical and psychological experience. The result is a strange fabricated world that raises questions about the possibilities of belonging and otherness. In this way, my work constantly examines and stretches the complex relationships that exist between architecture and narrative.
In my single-channel videos I examine social and psychological constructions through the use of individual and group movement in space. Directing a large group of moving participants and using digital editing I create different realities which are layered and superimposed one on top of another in a spatial manner presenting different qualities of spatiality and temporality.
In my black and white ink drawings I explore the obsession for domination and fetishism and their conflict with femininity in the control room as well as the bedroom. Depicting forceful feminine figures, the drawings reveal a dark, uncanny and lesser world, which blurs the boundaries between the dominant and the dominated and contends with the erotic dimensions of occupation. The works present situations which oscillate between the playful and the violent, expressing a diffused or contained aggression which is always in a state of emergency.