Untitled Document

Eden Bannet and Raffaella Crispino’s joint exhibition is part of a collaboration between the Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Naples (MADRE). In the project Transit, young artists from cities in the Middle East such as Cairo, Beirut and Istanbul are paired with promising Neapolitan artists and invited to present their work in MADRE. This exhibition is the second step of a project exhibited in MADRE in October 2009.

Bannet and Crispino investigate Naples and Tel Aviv, questioning the artist’s perspective when invited to create in a foreign city. Can an artist- tourist discern between the clichés that define cities and the hidden nuances? Despite different languages and aesthetics, both artists share the same voyeuristic gaze. They examine a series of contradictions familiar to both cities: ancient and modern, joie de vivre and a fascination with death, the elevation of the ordinary and the banalization of the sacred.

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In her video piece comprised of varying manifestations of light and shadows, Raffaella Crispino seeks out the clash between conflicting elements. The piece depicts the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, with fleeting images of the seperation wall and of a checkpoint. The poetic and lingering gaze deconstructs the images, creating a kind of formalistic cinematic impression that resembles the aesthetics of the Italian Cinema.

The video’s soundtrack is a manipulation of jingles from the "Voice of Peace" radio station, recorded from a tourist information stand in Tel Aviv’s Port. The artist’s intuitive attraction to the nostalgia of the broadcaster’s voice, brought her to discover this anecdote in the Israeli collective memory. This meeting point between the local history and the artist-tourist’s gaze creates an estrangement that penetrates through the clichés.

In addition to the video piece, Crispino presents an installation comprised of drawings depicting objects she observed Palestinians carrying when crossing checkpoints, displayed in a catalog-like manner. The nature and amount of the drawings and detailed measurements produce an allegedly scientific gaze, factual and dry. As in the video piece, Crispino situates the artist as an anthropologist.