Dana Levy
Dana Levy’s video work similarly fuses life and death, and confronts the natural world with the human thrust to order it. For example, in her two-channel video installation Silent among us / The Wake (2008-2011), she shows two ways of looking to natural history museums. In Silent Among Us, the stillness of the taxidermic birds in a natural history museum is ruptured by a flock of doves that invades the museum. The living birds fly naturally amongst the dead ones, just as death, and history, are an ever present and natural part of daily life in Israel. In The Wake, Levy explores the freedom that hides in such museums. The still butterflies eventually awaken and escape their cells. The work becomes a symbol of revolutionary awakening. The deathlike silence of the stuffed animals, encased in glass dioramas, is broken by a group of white pigeons or butterflies invading the museum. In this way, the work creates a sense of tension between the animals in flight, which represent nature, and between the lifeless exhibits, which reflect man’s concern with ordering and categorizing knowledge–a human pursuit that involves sterilization and death.
She has had solo shows at the Center for …
Dana Levy’s video work similarly fuses life and death, and confronts the natural world with the human thrust to order it. For example, in her two-channel video installation Silent among us / The Wake (2008-2011), she shows two ways of looking to natural history museums. In Silent Among Us, the stillness of the taxidermic birds in a natural history museum is ruptured by a flock of doves that invades the museum. The living birds fly naturally amongst the dead ones, just as death, and history, are an ever present and natural part of daily life in Israel. In The Wake, Levy explores the freedom that hides in such museums. The still butterflies eventually awaken and escape their cells. The work becomes a symbol of revolutionary awakening. The deathlike silence of the stuffed animals, encased in glass dioramas, is broken by a group of white pigeons or butterflies invading the museum. In this way, the work creates a sense of tension between the animals in flight, which represent nature, and between the lifeless exhibits, which reflect man’s concern with ordering and categorizing knowledge–a human pursuit that involves sterilization and death.
She has had solo shows at the Center for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv, Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in New York, Habres and Partner Gallery in Vienna, Tavi Dresdner Gallery in Tel Aviv, Rosenfeld Gallery in Tel Aviv, and Haifa Museum of Art. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at institutions such as The Neuberger Museum in New York, Bass Museum in Miami, Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Invisible Exports in New York, and Museum on the Seam in Jerusalem.
Courtesy of Braverman Gallery
Israel Museum, Jerusalem Isreal
Petach Tikva Museum, Petach Tikva, Israel
Donald Rothfeld Museum at the American University, Washington D.C.
Braverman Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
