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Mirit Cohen Caspi
Works 2002-2006
The artist Mirit Cohen Caspi has been dealing from the early 1980s with the human
likeness ranging from the spatially perceptive to the abstract. Her works embody a
form of documentation of an investigative internal voyage from which a far–reaching
system of signs and insights are retrievable.
In this exhibition the artist focuses on the human likeness undergoing mythical
transformations of body and garment, interior and exterior that dismantle the primal
likeness and create likenesses, made of cloth, comprising photographic print, hair, and
threads. Unlike in her previous works from the late 1980s and early 1990s, where
melancholic-intellectual displays predominated the artist now devotes herself in the
present works to organic material with regard to its constituents (hair, photographs of
leather) as well as to its structural form – rounded, plump, overflowing shapes
reminiscent of, or representing, body parts. Mirit Cohen Caspi creates hybrid
representations of the human image – a photograph of parted hair on the top of a
human head is embedded in the sculptural element that metamorphoses into a kind of
Gorgon-head with multiple arms. Wide cloth trousers with (pubic) hair sprouting from
the cloth, a dress with nipples, all of which illustrate the desire to combine and unite
the garment with the body itself.
A similar effect is obtained by a computer printout of a leatherlike texture embedded
in the inner lining of a leather coat (a work that was presented by the artist in her 2003
solo exhibition in the Ein Harod Museum of Art), or by attaching human limbs, such
as hands or feet, to articles of clothing. Impressing digital imagery into a body that is
represented by a garment intensifies the tension, engendered in the viewer, between
the beautiful and the repulsive, between the whole and its dismemberment, and
thereby creates Mirit Cohen Caspi’s artistic-mythical world. The work created by
means of soft material, with layers of cloth and patchwork sewing are reminiscent of
“female education through practical work.” One immediately rejects such a
description of the craftsmanship involved here because of the threatening, tormented
and morbid appearance of its individual components. The same applies to the
purposely perforated cloth that, on the one hand, is reminiscent of lace netting or of
weaving and, on the other hand, produces a violent effect of wounding and of cutting;
the pieces of cloth tell a tale of betrayal, by the garment, of the wholeness of the body,
all of which is portrayed as the wear and tear of life’s tribulations.
These elements of Mirit’s work unite her, most flatteringly, with the well-known
Berlin-born artist Eve Hesse (1936-1959) who similarly plaited, interwove and hung
on her sculpted elements the weighty painful experiences of her life. The purposeful
extensions of pieces of flimsy cloth, or the light transparent-as-wax sculpting of also
elongated figures enhance the space with a ghostly aura that emerges from the
subconscious in which female and male components lie interwoven. In addition, the
sharpness of sensual likenesses such as a red cherry between the thick lips of a
bearded man’s face render a faithful representation of the artist’s purpose. Skillfully
combining elements of life in her “alchemist’s vessel ” she then extracts from it
archetypal forms belonging to a legendary primordial world in which, according to
the best-known universal mythological narrative, both animal and human spirits exist
side by side with no separation between them.
According to C.G.Jung myth is the expression of the collective subconscious that
evokes ancient archetypes, whereas Rudolf Bultmann maintains that myth is the
rendition of an incident or occurrence in which unnatural powers or persons are at
play. In either case, these powers have also affected Mirit’s artistic work by exerting
their influence on her consciousness and on her creative powers, thereby somewhat
rocking her inherent complacency.
Naturally one can, without much difficulty, identify in this respect with the
prominence accorded by the artist to the feminine dimension and to the concept of the
“wild woman” (Women Who Run With the Wolves, Myths and Stories, published in
Hebrew by Modan Publishers) introduced by the leading Jungian psychoanalyst and
poet Clarissa Pinkola Estés.
Estés reveals that “the wild nature of the she-wolf” is what lies behind the ability of
the female to unite from the depths of her soul with the powers of survival. By means
of her mystic song “La Luva”, the old she-wolf, brings dead bones to life and these
become a running she-wolf that metamorphoses in its turn into a woman… A scene of
bristling claws extending into space, “hanging” forms, a plait that is also a hangman’s
rope, predator and prey, Little Red Riding Hood or The Hooded Terror. All these
resound in the depths of creation and stem from our consciousness – creating a
dramatic magical experience.
Curator: Varda Genossar
Translated by: Amos Riesel