Oreet Ashery
OREET ASHERY, Oh Jerusalem, video still, 2005
Oreet Ashery is a London based, context responsive artist working with live and performance art, video, 2-D image making, objects, text, research and the Internet.
Ashery’s work considers cultural and personal politics and their complex relationship to social realities. The experimental and conceptual aspects of the practice operate on the axis between every-day life and art. Her work has been shown extensively in the UK and internationally in museums, galleries, art centers, performance spaces, cinemas, and site-specific locations. Most recently: Brooklyn Museum (NYC), Freud Museum (London) Tate Modern (London), ICA, (London), De-Balie ( Amsterdam), OK Centre for Contemporary Art (Linz), Foxy Production (NYC), Arnolfini (Bristol), Liverpool Biennial, Kapelica Gallery (Ljubljana), Kontejner (Zagreb), KKV (Oslo), FABO (Toronto), Galeria de Arte Mexicano (Mexico City), Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), Centre of Attention (London), Khoj, (Delhi)…
Ashery has been working as an educationalist for many years including: lecturing, mentoring, educational work in prisons and public art projects in public housing.
Recently she received a prestigious AHRC project award, commencing in October 2007 at the Drama and English Department at Queen Mary University of London.
A single screen projection Oh Jerusalem, 2005 is a looped black & white silent video. The video feature the artist dressed-up both as an Arab man and an orthodox Jewish man. The two characters are bound in an endless repetition of acts and the power of inertia. As the rhythm of the acts accelerates, the characters merge into one, joined in their fixation on a drawing of Jerusalem. The video is reminiscent of Keaston and Chaplin in style and as such refer to the history of film and representation, whilst at the same time provokes the history of the conflict.