JEWISH MUSEUM EXHIBITS YAEL KANAREK’S ~ 'OBJECT of DESIRE'

Written by Phillipe Rosher Thursday, 30 September 2010 23:33

New York, NY - The Jewish Museum presents Object of Desire: Yael Kanarek’s World of Awe through February 24, 2008 in the Museum’s Barbara and E. Robert Goodkind Media Center.  Object of Desire is the third and newest installment of Yael Kanarek’s World of Awe project, an online travelogue chronicling the search for a lost treasure in a virtual desert landscape called Sunset/Sunrise.  
 
Featuring fifteen richly animated scenes that integrate English, Arabic, and Hebrew, Object of Desire draws from ancient Near Eastern themes as well as contemporary popular culture in a trilingual story space.   
 
Object of Desire’s scenes include a cave where one finds a hidden recipe for sesame cookies written in C programming language; a fossilized Noah’s Ark containing a trove of creatures who do not fit into male/female categories; a three-pronged structure of Arabic, Hebrew, and English alphabets that sails across a saffron-colored sky like a flock of birds; and a three-dimensional map of falafel restaurants that superimposes the Middle East on the East Village.
 
The protagonist of Object of Desire — whose gender identity and nationality remain ambiguous — is informed by historical figures such as Marco Polo, Mark Twain, the twelfth-century Sephardic merchant Benjamin of Tudela, and Isabelle Eberhardt, a Swiss-born convert to Islam who traveled throughout North Africa in the late nineteenth century dressed as a man.  While traveling through Sunset/Sunrise, the protagonist composes journal entries and writes passionate letters to a lover left behind.  Despite challenges posed by the grammar of Semitic languages, Kanarek frees the text from gender specificity by substituting an animated pictograph of an “eye” for Arabic and Hebrew letters.    
 
As an activist for cultural exchange beyond borders and nationalities, Kanarek invites viewers of Object of Desire to imagine an alternative existence.  Born in New York City and raised in Israel, Kanarek explains, “English, Arabic, and Hebrew make up the semantic landscape of my childhood. However, because of political conditions and the influence of media, the three together are nearly always associated with conflict and strife. A parallel world is free from obligations to history, religion and politics. It’s an opportunity to create a counter narrative that permits a single voice to emerge from these three languages, to express some of the most basic concerns of human existence: love, the relationship to one’s body, to landscape, home, and life and death.”

In seeking to loosen cultural and national borders, Kanarek has distributed Web site files to four different servers in Izmir (Turkey), New York City, Ramallah, and Tel Aviv.  In addition, visitors can access Object of Desire from The Jewish Museum’s Web site or using one of four corresponding Web addresses: www.nomad-objectofdesire.net (Izmir), www.eyebeam.org/objectofdesire (New York City), www.donialrahba.ps (Ramallah); and www.digitalartlab.org.il/objectofdesire (Tel Aviv).  Object of Desire’s interface design reveals information about the geographical location of files usually hidden from Internet users.  The exhibition at The Jewish Museum features on-site access to Object of Desire on one large monitor and a vintage Atari joystick for navigation.  Two additional workstations provide complete access to Object of Desire and the first two chapters of World of Awe.  The installation also includes digital prints based on three-dimensional imagery from the Web site.
 
Yael Kanarek (b. 1967, United States) is an artist who has developed a unique vocabulary of networked interfaces using photography, text, sculpture, and performance.  She was the recipient of the Netizens Webprize and the CNRS/UNESCO Lewis Carroll Prix Argos in France. Kanarek is the founder of Upgrade! International, a network of gatherings concerning art, technology and culture (www.theupgrade.net).  Her work has been shown at the Whitney Biennial, The Kitchen, The Drawing Center, American Museum of the Moving Image, and Ronald Feldman Gallery. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art commissioned Destruction & Mending, the second chapter of World of Awe.  She is currently an honorary senior fellow at Eyebeam Atelier and represented by bitforms gallery.
 
Located on the third floor of The Jewish Museum, the Goodkind Media Center houses a digital library of radio and television programs from the Museum’s National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting (NJAB). It also features a changing exhibition space dedicated to video and new media.  Using computer workstations, visitors are able to search material by keyword and by categories such as art, comedy, drama, news, music, kids, Israel, and the Holocaust.

About The Jewish Museum
The Jewish Museum was established on January 20, 1904 when Judge Mayer Sulzberger donated 26 ceremonial art objects to The Jewish Theological Seminary of America as the core of a museum collection.  Today, The Jewish Museum maintains an important collection of 26,000 objects – paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, archaeological artifacts, ceremonial objects, and broadcast media.  Widely admired for its exhibitions and educational programs that inspire people of all backgrounds, The Jewish Museum is the preeminent United States institution exploring the intersection of 4,000 years of art and Jewish culture.
 
General Information
Museum hours are Saturday through Wednesday, 11am to 5:45pm; and Thursday, 11am to 8pm.  Museum admission is $12.00 for adults, $10.00 for senior citizens, $7.50 for students, free for children under 12 and Jewish Museum members.  Admission is free on Saturdays.  For general information on The Jewish Museum, the public may visit the Museum’s Web site at http://www.thejewishmuseum.org or call 212.423.3200.  The Jewish Museum is located at 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92^nd Street, Manhattan.

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