LB°13 — Artists
ARKIV
Miri Nishri (b. 1960, Colombia), is an artist based in Israel.
In January 2009, in the midst of Operation Cast Lead and the bombings on Gaza by the Israeli Air Force, I visited the Kibbutz where I grew up. I went to the place where we used to play in the forest as children. I went to “The Oceans”. The Oceans is the name we gave the little rain puddles that filled up every winter in the forest overlooking Jezreel Valley. Inside these oceans, the forest, in all its celestial beauty, reflects back to create an astonishing sight. Standing there that January afternoon, I saw the forest shaking to the sound of Air Force bombers headed for the war. The deep contradiction between the beauty of that magical afternoon and the sounds of war in the background put me in a state of shock. The brutal sights of war flickering on the television screen seemed to unite with the shivering reflections of the forest in the oceans, breaking the boundaries between innocence and violence, civilian life and the terror of war. The white phosphorus shells, the valley and sights of a childhood long gone – all shimmer in the oceans. The oceans of cast lead.
Miri Nishri is an award-winning visual and video artist born in Colombia but based in Tel Aviv, where she works and teaches. Her works have been shown in Israel and abroad, including: Israel Museum, Tel-Aviv Museum, Ramat Gan Museum, Stenersen Museum, Norway, Human Emotion Project, Italy, NY Studio Gallery, USA, Stuttgarter Filmwinter, Germany.
Work
Oceans of Lead, installation, video
Location
Rovaniemi
