Ofri Cnaani

The Sota Project

The Sota Project is an immersive large-scale video installation that reenacts a controversial Talmudic text, telling a story of sisters, adultery, jealousy, and women's power to love.

Work Project Statement Bio Press

The Sota Project is a large-scale video installation that reenacts a controversial story from the Talmud. It is a story about jealousy, trust and mortal love that follows an “adulterous” woman who is put on trial by her suspecting husband while her sister helps her fight for her life.

The four walls of the exhibition space are covered by video projections allowing the narrative to develop in time and space in parallel. Not only a “moving picture” but an attempt to create a “moving mural”, Sota explores the relationship between architecture and narrative and offers a new form of a ‘spatial narrative’. Using old visual storytelling techniques (as we can see them mainly in murals and tapestries) and new technologies (sync video, motion sensors, animation) Sota is an attempt to create a hybrid between ancient media and new media both visually and literally. The text can thus burst into both spatial and time-based narratives and calls into question the notion of a coherent truth.

The Sota Project was presented at Kunsthalle Galapagos, NYC, February – April 2011.

Ofri Cnaani (b. Israel, 1975) lives in New York and works in time-based media, large-scale installations as well as drawing. Cnaani’s work blurs the boundaries between a constructed reality and reality itself and explore spatial awareness by analyzing their formal dimensions within social and psychological spheres. Ofri Cnaani graduated from Hunter College’s MFA studio program in 2004. She is recently completing a large-scale commission to create 10 site-specific video installations at 10 museums of contemporary art in Italy’s Lombardy region. Cnaani is a Six Points Fellow and was twice the winner of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation award. Solo exhibitions include: PS1/ MoMA, Twister, Network of Lombardy Contemporary Art Museums, Italy; Andrea Meislin Gallery; NYC, Braverman Gallery, Tel Aviv; Pack Gallery, Milan; Haifa Museum of Art, Israel; Herzlyia Museum of Art, Israel. Group exhibitions include: Moscow Biennial, The Kitchen, NYC; Bronx Museum of the Arts, NYC; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Arnolfini Foundation Museum, Bristol, UK; Tel Aviv Museum; The Israel Museum, Israel; Prague Triennale among many others.

Contact Info:

http://ofricnaani.com/

ofricnaani at gmail.com