The Sota Project
February 16th – April 23rh Kunsthalle Galapagos 16 Main St., DUMBO, Brooklyn
Kunsthalle Galapagos is pleased to present Ofri Cnaani: The Sota Project, an immersive, multilayered video installation that reenacts a controversial text from the Talmud. A tale of two sisters, bound together in symbiotic loyalty that unfolds in both time and three-dimensional space.
Housed in an expansive, historic horse-stable above Galapagos Art Space, Ofri Cnaani’s ambitious piece invites viewers to step into room-sized moving panoramas, and walk through an enigmatic and disturbing ancient story that has hardly been told.
Sota, an anonymous Biblical story, recounts the tale of two sisters, Sota and Bekhorah, who are bound together in symbiotic loyalty when Sota’s husband accuses her of infidelity. Against a backdrop of jealousy, betrayal, judgment, ritual humiliation, and ultimately death, Cnaani’s installation depicts a deceptively simple moral parable that unfolds in countless ways.
Video projections on all four walls of the exhibition space will allow multiple narratives to develop concurrently, thus calling into question the notion of a single, coherent truth. The Sota Project uses the most current new media technologies while employing storytelling techniques inspired by ancient Greco-Roman murals and Renaissance tapestries. After Kunsthalle Galapagos’ presentation, The Sota Project will travel to the Rothschild 69 in Tel Aviv.
As James Trainor writes in the exhibition’s catalogue essay: “In the case of Ofri Cnaani’s Sota Project, a complex multilayered video installation that unfolds in both time and three-dimensional space, the original kernel of a story is barely there. It is a haiku, an obscure scriptural footpath that peters out into nothing almost before it has begun, a barebones inventory of facts a mere fourteen lines long. The anonymous story from the Talmud – recounting the tale of two sisters, Sota and Bekhorah, living in separate villages but bound together in symbiotic loyalty amidst a backdrop of jealousy, betrayal,guilt and innocence, deception, societal judgment, ritual humiliation and ultimately death – is, as Cnaani points out, a deceptively simple moral parable, one that leaves open multiple blind spots.”
Kunsthalle Galapagos is located at 16 Main Street, second floor, DUMBO, Brooklyn. F train to Jay Street or C train to High Street. Opening hours: Tue-Sat, 12-6PM.
The Sota Project had been generously supported by numerous sponsors, including a grant from The Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists (a partnership of Avoda Arts, JDub Records, and the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, and made possible with major funding from UJA-Federation of New York.); Artis ; The Rabinovich Foundation; The Consulate General of Israel in NY; The Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation; Hadassah-Brandeis Institute; Andrea Meislin Gallery; Braverman Galllery; Rothschild 69; and Mana Contemporary.
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published by Sternthal Books
In the case of Ofri Cnaani’s Sota Project, a complex multilayered video installation that unfolds in both time and three-dimensional space, the original kernel of a story is barely there. It is a haiku, an obscure scriptural footpath that peters out into nothing almost before it has begun, a barebones inventory of facts a mere fourteen lines long. The anonymous story from the Talmud – recounting the tale of two sisters, Sota and Bekhorah, living in separate villages but bound together in symbiotic loyalty amidst a backdrop of jealousy, betrayal, guilt and innocence, deception, societal judgment, ritual humiliation and ultimately death – is, as Cnaani points out, a deceptively simple moral parable, one that leaves open multiple blind spots. James Trainor
PRESS
BOMB – Samuel Jablon in conversation with Ofri Cnaani
The Art Of ‘Sisterhood’ by Eric Herschthal / The Jewish Week
Dangerous Liaisons: Ofri Cnaani’s ‘The Sota Project’ by Cheryl Kaplan / The Forward
