Hilla Ben Ari | Diana, installation
Situated in the Museum’s elongated narrow corridor, the installation engulfs those walking along it with an array at once threatening, intrusive and enveloping. The work consists of a rigid grid made of rows of antlers projecting from the walls, rows of repeated woman-shaped cutouts, and threads tying them together. A geometric, nearly mechanical array is thus created, albeit one that embeds the biomorphic organicity embodied in the female silhouette and the horns’ curving. The duality governing the work is also manifested in the tension between the male and the female, between the stretched, protruding line of the threads and antlers on the one hand, and the trickling, uncontrollable line of female bleeding, between the bursting violence of the antlers erupting into the space and the tenderness characterizing the envelope of threads.
