Fearful days

Catalogue for the exhibition Fearful Days: A Triology.

The exhibition at Oslo Kunstforening/Oslo Fine Art Society with Dafna Shalom includes the video trilogy Fearful Days and a photographic series depicting details of the human body covered in war paint. While the photographs resemble abstract paintings, the combat suits used in the ritual war dance look more like landscapes and the human bodies take on the shape of animals. Nothing is what it looks like.

The first video was made in 2006 during the Second Lebanon War, known in Lebanon as the July War. A prayer, structured as a call and reply were the woman call and the men reply, accompanies the act of painting, giving the martial act a different tone. In the second video a similar prayer in Hebrew Moroccan style accompanies the geometric environment with the bees' precise movements. The field in the third video is located in the southern part of Israel close to the Gaza border. The British constructed the sixty systematically placed walls for battle during WWII.

Dafna Shalom studied at the International Center for Photography in New York, and graduated from Hunter College with a degree in fine arts. In 1997 She assisted on various contemporary art projects for the Public Art Fund and the multimedia artist Oliver Herring. She exhibited her work at The Minnesota Center for Photography, USA; Haifa Museum, Israel; Petach Tikva Museum, Israel; Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, USA; Camera Obscura, Tel Aviv; The Jewish museum, New York; CCCB Barcelona; Tallinn Art Hall, Estonia; 50 Gallery, Dusseldorf; the Suzanne Dellal Performing Art Center, Tel Aviv and more.

Fearful Days: A Trilogy was curated by Marianne Hultman, Director, Oslo Kunstforening/Oslo Fine Art Society. The exhibition was made possible through the kind support of the Foundation Fritt Ord, Stiftelsen Morgenstjernen and Norske Kunstforeninger in Norway.