Artist Statement

In my work I use two mediums, video and drawings, to challenge accepted notions of domination, gender reversal, and spatial awareness.

My work explores the theatrical potential of the urban space and investigates the relationship between architecture and narrative, seeking to dissolve spatial distinctions between reality and mythical realms. Working with exciting architecture, I often use video projection in order to create new physical and psychological experiences within spaces that we otherwise assume are known.

Looking at different modes of spatial performativity, my recent videos resituate an ancient drama within a modern, urban context.  In constructing this contemporary tale, I hope to re-visit space physically, visually, and culturally. The result is a strange, fabricated world that operates in the space between the screen, the viewers’ imagination, the actual city, raising questions about the possibilities of belonging and otherness.

With allusions to the history of art and references to film, each piece in my series of ink on Mylar drawings functions as a single frame within a larger narrative. The works present situations, which oscillate between the playful and the violent, expressing a diffused or contained aggression, which is always in a state of emergency. Both the subject matter and the presentation and composition continue my previous investigations of power-relations, gender roles, and the nature of visuality.

Ofri Cnaani was born in 1975 in Israel. She lives and works in New York and Israel.