Next of S’Kin

Sigal Avni
3 February 2000 to 18 May 2000

Avni’s work attempts to display ‘the “impossible” cohabitation of two bodies in one space. What is not nameable and therefore “impossible” is nevertheless there’. (Barry Taylor, Palpable Signs, Nexus Vol 6, Scarlet Press, 1999)

Using basic techniques in black-and-white photography to extraordinary effect, Sigal Avni is well known for dealing with female identity through the prism of the mother-child relationship. Her work draws the viewer into the metaphorical realm of universal conflicts between mother and child (and specifically between mother and daugther): it touches on issues such as facing death at the moment of giving birth and the unresolved conflicts between growth and castration, acceptance and rejection, dependence and alienation. It is this thin line between symbiosis and alienation with the inevitable pain of separateness that runs as a thread throughout her entire work.

Next of S’kin included Sigal Avni’s new work stemming from her MA thesis (titled A Voice On the Skin), in which she discusses self mutilation as an alternative feminine language in Western Patriarcal Society. By presenting bodies articulated in other ways than the norm, this sublime work destabilises the viewers, inviting them to rediscover and interior landscape of the body, the senses and the psyche.