ERASED MONUMENT
Ramat Gan, Israel 2008
A drawing performance at the studio of the sculptor Natan Rapoport, once renown for his sculptural monuments of idealized nationalist heroes and of holocaust victims.
Over the course of the day, I create a large outdoor mural, using big chunks of natural charcoal, and using drawings composed from elements of the sculptor’s work. The collective sense of hope and of despair of those times yielded highly expressionistic forms, now untenable and rejected; in reviving those forms, I briefly reconnect to the spirit of that era; but after creating the work, I begin to erase, to rub away and destroy the surface, until only a shadow of the drawing persists, underscoring the transience of both the grandiose style, and of the nationalist historical memory itself.
The work was done as part of the multidisciplinary art event The Menorah Returns at the Rapoport Studio, Ramat Gan, Israel.
