Amit Leblang
Do you trust the translator?
This research is about constructing and maintaining the specific (yet general) Israeli, Jewish, and Zionist identity through multiple artistic methods. By looking at and recording the performative symbols of this identity, the artist is searching for her position.
Amit Leblang created an archive of this identity through various artistic expressions, including videos, sounds, still images, and collages. This archive explores one's position in and out of context. For example, in Belgium, in Israel, in Antwerp, in Brussels, in a synagogue, in a car, on the street, at home, walking, driving, staring, looking in, looking out, being with, being without.
What political and violent implications do this constant maintenance of "one" have? Do we already know the answer? How does the language function in this carrying of memories and myths? How is a story being told? Over dinner, in a book, on the way somewhere? The artist questions her origins and upbringing by translating a conversation about an ancient myth, heritage, narrative, history, religion, and occupation. Inside the car, the family members are trapped. In their dynamic, in their nation-state, in their financial class, in the map, in their context, and in their own words. Or maybe, it's someone else's words and someone else's memories. Who is the talking? And who is listening?
Moving between the individual's history to the group's history, this research questions the core of the Israeli identity. The artist breaks her identity into actions, sounds, videos, concepts, and texts. Deconstruction is the first step. The second step will be construction because one cannot stay scattered. Right?
Amit Leblang, 1994, is a Brussels-based multi-disciplinary artist and a language teacher. She achieved her BFA from Shenkar College of engineering, art and design in Ramat Gan and her MA from LUCA school of arts in Brussels. She has worked between mediums and discourses ever since she discovered she could. She works in loops, with movement and displacement, lack of understanding, and loss of words. Her works emphasize the doubt one holds when coming to creating an artwork. Is there something new under the sun?