Monarch Migration #3:  Biotopia: Gaza
​Special project at "​Fresh Paint 2018"  Contemporary Art Fair, Tel Aviv
Curator: Gideon Smilansky
​
​Photoes: Dafna Gazit

“Vibrant butterflies and insects, shining with the glint of an oil slick, call me to hunt them, touch, take pleasure.
They emerge from the ground at death season.
Today, I am called to Gaza, tomorrow – somewhere else.
I am enchanted by the humming of the Ordnancea insects, which feed, hatch, and drown in the tracks left by the tank in the muddy puddle.”

Rotem Ritov / Ordnancea Huntress
 
Monarch Migration#3 – Biotopia: Gaza is a diorama/installation, a seductive and horrifying ensemble that symbolically emulates the “natural habitat” of 2007-2017 artillery. Shaped like the Gaza Strip, the installation alludes to a battlefield, beckoning us to ride the rollercoaster that takes us between displays of magical beauty and the discovery of a bloated corpse. Ordnancea butterflies/insects are placed in a frozen formation, as though captured through the camera lens in their natural activity in the field. This is a fantastical world that was “frozen in time”, a scene from the story of Palestinian-Israeli relations.
The ordnance in the installation are an inverted double spread of IDF weaponry used in operations in Gaza over the last decade.
2018 marks ten years of the Gaza blockade.

Laser paper cut, Lacquer, Pigments and Polyurethane