| Orit Ishay, Public Domain, The Heder Gallery, 2009 (curator, catalogue) | | | For the last three years Orit Ishay has been photographing bomb
shelters in the peripheral areas of Israel,1 from Kiryat Shmona in the
north to Ofakim in the south. Through research and inquiry, location
and photography, Ishay has constructed a body of work depicting
empty bomb shelters, photographed to show their surface materiality.
Reading into them, as I propose in this essay, indicates the manner
in which state mechanisms are reflected in the public sphere and
landscape and how establishment power relations – national, political,
gender-based, cultural, social and others – are inbuilt. Their exterior
symbolization reflects consciousness and a collective, cognitive state
of mind; their typological connection enables construction of a visual
text indicating these relationships, and the mental and cultural patterns
ingrained in Israeli society. | | |
| | | |  | | Kiryat Shmoana, 2008 | | |
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