Michal Helfman

Michal Helfman (born 1973 in Tel Aviv) is an Israeli artist living and working in Tel Aviv, Israel.[1] She is a multidisciplinary artist working in various disciplines including sculpture, architecture, video and drawings. In order to demonstrate the relations between the reviled and the hidden forces working within society and culture, she has developed an installation platform based on the back-stage front-stage structure of the theatrical stage as one,[2] which brings together simultaneously both the real and the symbolic.[3]

Early life

Helfman graduated from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in 1998.

Career

In her Installation Just Be Good to Me exhibited at The Israel Museum in Jerusalem in 2007, Helfman employed multiple disciplines and media, such us architecture, interior design, sculpture and drawing. The opening scene of the film, which was screened in the first room of the exhibition, shows Helfman herself dressed as a dancer (a variation of Edgar Degas' ballerinas) diapering her son in a nursing room as a life-size model in the midst of the desert.[4] The space is not continuous, or narrative. It’s an illusionary moment that begins like an ordinary home video and then goes elsewhere.

Approach

The film takes place in the desert and may be characterized with reference to several genres: documentation of action, a family film, a video clip or an excerpt from a full-length feature film. The refrain “Just be good to me” becomes this primal cry of a human being who depends on a relationship. The moment in which the mother and son disappear into the desert night, illustrates this mutual request. The artist transforms an image into an icon, in a symbol of dualism that exists between nature and culture, appearance and reality, single and collective. Between illusion, fiction and reality, Helfman immerses the viewer in the complex relationships between man and environment, space and action.[5]

Often collaborating with senior Israeli choreographers, dancers, gymnasts, and musicians, as part of her longtime research on the potential relations between the physical and the visual, Helfman's works constantly challenge the perception of space and movement.[6]

Helfman exhibited in numerous international exhibitions, including the 50th Biennale di Venezia, San Francisco's Institute of Visual Art, Fondazione Sandretto in Torino and the Institute of Visual Arts in the University of Wisconsin. She is currently a faculty member at the BFA and MFA programs of Bezalel Academy and holds a BFA from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design.[7]

Selected solo exhibitions

External links

References

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