Ilit Azoulay

Photographer Illit Azoulay creates processed photographic montage, which involves field research and computerized finalization. The works contain thousands of images reorganized and remodeled together to create new utopian venues. She starts by visiting buildings slated for demolition, usually located in the old parts of Tel-Aviv, and picking out hidden objects inside the walls and underneath the floors–metal pieces, stones, plastics, aluminum, alloy, or glass shards, seashells–fragments that were left scattered without further use. Sometimes she takes chunks of walls back to her studio in order to break them and discover ‘missing’ objects frozen inside. Azoulay cleans and oils these objects–sometimes remodeling their original shapes or colors. When they are ready for the “stage,’ she photographs each object separately, often from the same angle, using the same macrolens and under the same light to ensure a homorganic status. At this point, the artist constructs a “wall” in Photoshop. On this artificial structured canvas, she arranges the photographed objects, forming large-scale panoramas that simulate a fictitious space.

These works appear to be a realistic and possible space, while simultaneously reminiscent of a cabinet of curiosities that exposes the means and the process through which they were constructed. The human vision is functional and goal-oriented, so it often misses alternative possibilities of perception and observation. Guided by the desire to expand these possibilities, Azoulay is interested in creating utopian, fictitious, even ‘impossible’ spaces that point toward the limitations of sight and undermine the conventional process of seeing.

Azoulay has had solo exhibitions at Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto, KW, Berlin, and Parc des Ateliers in Arles. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Ashdod Art Museum, Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv Museum of Art, among other institutions.

Courtesy of the artist