Responding to the Balfour centennial anniversary, this series invites renowned scholars to unpack the complexities, conflicts and histories that define artistic practice in one of the most complicated areas in the world.
Israeli art operates in an impossible field of conflicts, tensions and divergences, which can be traced back to its moments of inception—which are also the source of a heated debate: although it is customary to identify the zero year of Israeli art as 1905, when the Bezalel Art Academy was established in Jerusalem, as a principle achievement of the Zionist movement, Israel declared its status as a nation-state only decades later, in 1948. Such divisions charted a volatile arena of exchange, both in local discourse and its global reception. This lecture series aspires to unpack some of these complexities, by providing an in-depth analysis of central concepts in contemporary practice. As Israel is preparing to celebrate its seventieth anniversary, each lecture in this series asks to offer a historical overview and a critical analysis of burning issues and exceptional artists, whose work could not have materialized anywhere else.
10:30am-12:00pm, Familian Campus, 15600 Mulholland Drive, Bel Air, CA.
March 27: Sagi Refael, The Male Body and Its Visual Representations
April 24: Prof. Dalia Manor
May 15: Rotem Rozental, from Yaacov Ben Don to Yael Bartana: Photography and the Moving Image
Admissions: $10 for each lecture, or $25 for the series.
The Soraya Sarah Nazarian Program in Fine Arts reflects and sustains AJU’s commitment to supporting and exploring creativity, artistic expressions, and its meeting points with day-to-day experience. In this framework, the program offers opportunities for learning, deepening creative knowledge, and finding new outlets for expression. We recognize art as a powerful space in which ideas are shaped and the understanding of the world around us is continually examined.
