In the center of the exhibition “Synthetic Ivory” stands a floating stabilizer made up of scenes created by different people and put together by the artist Neta Dror. Dror invited her friends to “play with the barbies”, just as she would have done as a child, but this time as adults. Curator: Gil Cohen.
The implicit tension in the relationship with a doll that is a woman and not a child – should I bring myself closer to her in terms of appearance and lifestyle or is there also an option for the doll to come closer to me – has received many studies and criticisms and in this exhibition Dror chose to touch it from a direct place of an invitation to play together.
Out of the open playful action emerged the ways in which the doll activates mechanisms ingrained in everyone and a desire to create additional options for narratives that as children they did not know about or felt were contrary to dictates and ideals. The scenes created range from the most mundane to the grotesque in relation to the need, desire and free imagination of the games.
In this way, an invitation to play that began as an experimental move and without a clear intention, became a therapeutic action in which the dissonance between the doll’s status as a high, even sacred object, and between the different and varied realities and life experiences was balanced. The created space invites the visitors to re-examine their personal meeting point between life and the narratives that the doll brings with it.
The exhibition at P8 Gallery – Hatish 1, Tel Aviv
Opening: 1.12
Gallery talk: 24.12
Lock: 31.12