Ariel Sharon by artist Noam Braslavsky
The ‘Ariel Sharon’ Exhibition by artist Noam Braslavsky, Has received worldwide acclaim, interest from a wide spectrum of curators, collectors and museums, and global media attention. It is currently showing in the Kishon Gallery (http://www.kishongallery.com) untill the 27 of November 2010. (CNN , New York Times, Independent UK, BBC )
“You do not believe these rough reproductions… but they remind you of something; something that you already know. This was precisely what an image should do. The correct function of an image was not primarily to represent something in a visually convincing way but rather to refer to something the Word or the dogma – as a sign to remind one of it” Hanne Kolind Poulsen, “Melchior Lorcks at the court of Frederik II 1582”, Denmark 2006
Albeit insisting on the concrete, and concentrating on every detail of Ariel Sharon’s physical condition, Noam Breslawski’s work strives for the symbolic. Since suffering an aneurysm and going into coma in January 2006, Ariel Sharon is no longer with us and yet still present. His hanging between life and death does not allow us to let go of him, but nor can he live among us. On one hand his state is similar to that of Menachem Begin who retired from public life and avoided contact with the outside world – but unlike Begin, Sharon did not choose this. On the other hand, the sudden halt of his political activity resembles the empty void left by Rabin who was murdered while serving his term as Prime Minister.
In the beginning of his “18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”, Karl Marx cites Hegel as saying that all great world-historic facts and personages appear twice, and adds: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Sharon’s departure from Israeli politics may be experienced as tragedy, but as opposed to the totality and finality of Rabin’s assassination, Sharon’s absent-presence is experienced as a farce – as if he may return at any moment. The fact that Sharon as a Prime Minister was widely accepted by large portions of the Jewish Israeli population, has bestowed on his successors the image of stand-ins. The ghost of his return continues to influence the way the political leadership is perceived. The image of the leader who is no more, but is still here, reappears again and again – so alive is this spirit that in recent months, a Neo-Zionist movement HaSmol HaLeumi” (The National Left) started a campaign in which the `92 elections poster for the Labor Party, “Israel is Waiting for Rabin” was reprinted.
Sharon may be gone from politics, but remains ever-present and influential in our political imagination. He continues to hold a political office as a sort of ancestor to be followed, whether as successors or as opponents – to be awed by, hated or admired. Journalist Ben Kaspit put it in a typical plain speech: “The Prime Minister is the father of us all”. Like a monarch, he is the father of all his subjects – and his body is the embodiment of sovereignty – which is why the French Revolution sought the physical death of the king, the elimination of his body, which embodied sovereignty. The government, with its privileged power to kill, became heir to the king’s throne.
Sharon’s still breathing and beating body is an allegory for the Israeli political body – a dependent and mediated existence, self-perpetuated artificially and out of inertia, with open eyes that cannot see.
The inability to part from what is lost, is the hallmark of melancholy. While the assassination of Rabin has a definite day of mourning marked on the calendar, Sharon’s absence has not been settled by mourning and therefore remains present day to day. And so, the biggest and nearly the only attempt to establish a commemoration of Sharon itself seems like a farce: The rechristening of Hiriya landfill as “Sharon Park”. The park’s website announces that “Sharon Park turns the site of Hiriya, for years used as the ‘back yard’ and ‘trash can’ of the metropolitan area, into the front yard and display window of Gush Dan and all of Israel. This is the vision behind ‘Ariel Sharon Park’. From garbage dump – into a green belt. From environmental hazard – into a national asset that will project to the world the new face of Israel”. The park’s promotional text reads like a farce that might have been written on Ariel Sharon’s own figure – veteran of Alexandroni Brigade and special forces Unit 101, the father of the settlements who was barred from ever again serving as Defence Minister after the Sabra and Shatila massacre, the engineer of the refugee camps’ destruction, the instigatorof the unilateral “disengagement plan” from the Gaza Strip and the eviction of its settlements – a figure controversial for most of his political career, he who only at the end of the prior decade was a political outcast, now becomes the display window.
Hanging between life and death, Sharon does not relent. This public exhibition allows a “pilgrimage” within his lifetime. Noam Breslawski exhibits in Kishon Gallery a visiting space containing Sharon’s hospital bed, life sized. In keeping with the binding rules of limited visits of up to three visitors a time, passage restricted to a marked trail and staying quiet, a guard allows individual visitors to go in and see Sharon’s figure lying in bed and breathing autonomously. The theatricality of pilgrimage to Sharon’s comatose body prompts the spectator to perform. The positioning has a destabilizing effect – this is not a provocative speculation in the likes of Maurizio Cattelan’s statue in which a comet strikes the Pope (“Il nona ora”, 1999). Here the provocative speculation is the location of the visitor space and not the condition of the character. Berslawski’s modus operandi, by which the spectator’s very presence partakes in the creation of the work of art, is what the artist calls a “user activated journey”. The spectator’s participation in the ritual makes them an active part of the work in the exhibition space. Their appearance with and in front of other spectators is what establishes the ritual. In this way, a happening occurs around the object, which provides the core of Breslawski’s artistic act.
For the Pharaohs, Walt Disney, Lenin in the Red Square and Kim Il-Sung in Kumsusan Palace of North Korea, commemoration is a launch toward eternity as well as a denial of death. Advanced technologies allowing us to postpone death are already in daily use – from the attempt to erase time via plastic surgery, botox and facelifts and to resuscitation devices – now, Orange County California and Pyongyang are joined with Ariel Sharon’s “Mausoleum” where the exhibition becomes the agent of commemoration.
The very visibility of Sharon’s body creates a political space of appearance. Through its insistence on convincing elements and details, in the morbid spirit of a wax museum, the exhibit enables us to rethink the political. The displaying of Sharon’s body, which up until today was stashed away in one of the hospital’s internal wards (and will soon be transferred to his ranch “Havat Shikmim”), immediately alters the surrounding reality. The provocative aspect of Noam Berslawski’s work does not consist in incidental speculation, but in the actual public outing of a corporeal manifestation of the political body. (from the exhibition text of Joshua Simon )
