alicenations: Alice by Yifat Bezalel

Yifat Bezalel

"In the Alices series Yifat is using the character of Alice in wonderland. She’s disconnecting Alice from the original narrative, emplacing her in multiple-character, meticulously built up scenes. Yifat is reflecting about the hole through which Alice falls, a passage, a gateway, limbo, nowhere, where nothing is happening."

found HERE (Karen Bar-Gil)

“O artista terá, tal como Alice no país das maravilhas, que atravessar o espelho da retina para alcançar uma expressão mais profunda” disse Marcel Duchamp. A obra de Carroll é a obra prima e a matéria prima, múltipla e ampla na qual o artista pode mergulhar e atravessar. Alice é um livro infinito, disse Alberto Mangel. Uma frase pode conter mundos maravilhosos, uma imagem prolifera jardins de desejos, uma passagem abre caminhos oníricos, uma pergunta desdobra enigmas e paradoxos. “First, you must close your eyes, or you won’t see anything”.

Quando as Alices de Carroll foram ilustradas por John Tenniel na Inglaterra vitoriana, inaugurou-se uma tradição de Alices que seguiram esse caminho. Nas ilustrações clássicas de John Tenniel foram criadas representações canônicas, figuras que se tornariam até hoje referências básicas e porto seguro para quem quiser representar a menina em diálogo com as convenções estéticas vitorianas. No mundo contemporâneo o cânone de Tenniel se torna material para a metalinguagem. Muitas Alices contemporâneas recriam essas figuras dentro de novas figuras, num mise en abyme. Figuras conversam com figuras, podendo utilizar as ilustrações originais de Tenniel segundo novas relações de intertextualidade.

Alice é atravessada por um espelho móvel de mundos oníricos.

Yifat Bezalel

"A river child, Alice moves amongst mazes where one is lost and found in mysterious rhythms. The great paradox running through Alice’s adventures, according to Deleuze, is the loss of her own name, her infinite identity, her eternal becoming. When the caterpillar asks, Who are you? Alice does not know the answer. I know who I was . . . but I think I must have been changed several times since then. In her typically paradoxical manner, Alice says no, but also says yes: I know who I am; the transformation continues. Like Alice, when it seems we know who we are, we’re already someone else, and what we think we are, is what we once were. And the world that we know is changing every second. The girl, born into the River of Heraclitus, knows that being and nonbeing are in constant conversation, in an eternal cycle that is being created at all times.

When Alice says that she only knows who she was, she is saying that we are always in motion. And when she was drawn by John Tenniel in Victorian England, a tradition of Alices was born that would follow in this path. But Alice is no longer the Victorian Alice, instead she is a living kaleidoscope of all of the possibilities. How many artists were in fact driven by the need to overcome the stereotypical imagery of the girl and her amazing world, and by the quest for new adventures in expression? Instead of the question “Who is Alice?” there are now paths leading to that which Alice might come to be. . . .

As the twentieth century progressed, the concept of illustration underwent profound transformations, in dialogue with the radical changes happening in the visual arts. Artists broke down the barriers between the outside world and the experiences of the mind, questioning the idea of a mimetic approach to illustration. The transformations in the universe of the arts and counterculture were re-creating Alice’s experiences in the mêlée of her dream world and wonderland. At the end of that century, Alice’s looking-glass shattered into a million pieces, spreading within the collective imagination new meta-Alices in a nonsensical, magical hourglass of alicinations.

The artists and illustrators were driven to discover or invent new relationships between text and pictures. The identity of the subject was subverted by the allure of the unknown and inexplicable. Rather than repeat, illustrators started to provoke and transgress. They questioned the classic idea that art should imitate or interpret an exterior reality. They also began to seek out subversion, paradox, and experimentation. The present time is filled with otherness and difference. Intertextual readings, metalanguage, multiple assemblies, nonlinear narratives. Abracadabra!"

continue HERE "The Hunting of Alice in Seven fits" by Adriana Peliano

"Yifat Bezalel In Tate Liverpool’s ‘Alice In Wonderland’ Exhibition: Concerned with real Vs unreal space, with fragility, uncertainty and the sense of being suspended between life and death, Yifat Bezalel’s installation channels the hole into which Alice falls and will be displayed at the Tate Liverpool, as part of their ‘Alice In Wonderland’ exhibition."

found HERE (Embassy of Israel - London)

Yifat Bezalel

"The story of Alice is already so well known that it becomes fragmented, repeated, displaced, deconstructed, gnawed upon by artists from everywhere, in every way. With her serpentine neck, Alice navigates among hybrid identities, blends, contrasts, oddities, merchandise, gato por lebre, and senselessness that everybody buys and believes without understanding why. She sets out for the new and looks back to reinvent herself all over again. This is Alice. Alice is all of them and none of them, and she opens herself up like the largest kaleidoscope ever seen. Good-bye, feet!

Alice strolls along the margins and between the lines; she crosses borders, a traveler through the unknown, but also through stock phrases, clichés, the commonplace, distortions and cheap simplifications that insist on impoverishing life and art. As we travel through Alice’s landscapes, we also travel through our own interior landscapes. New Alices learn that a path has not been set; rather, it opens as one goes forward, according to the poet Antonio Machado.

Alice is an invitation to duplicity (for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people), multiplicity (she began thinking over all the children she knew that were of the same age as herself, to see if she could have been changed for any of them), becoming (I know who I was, but I think I must have been changed several times since then), and the loss of one’s own name (This must be the wood where things have no names. I wonder what’ll become of MY name when I go in?). We must create new forms of expression to give way to new Alices more sensitive to these subtle and free becomings."