(M)otherland

Artists

Ruth Patir

Press release

National Participation - Israel

M/otherLand is a cross-generational 3D documentary saga that reimagines fertility goddesses from ancient Judean times as real-life mothers. The works deal with the relations between gender representation, reproductive rights and state politics in the contemporary technocentric world. She utilizes motion capture technologies and inscribes recordings of real body movements onto the ancient female statuettes – the archeological relics used for fertility rituals currently on display in the national collection of the Israel Museum. On the one hand, Patir releases these figurines from a certain stagnation in their historical gender roles, allowing them to explore their sexuality and femininity in new ways. On the other hand, she accentuates their captivity in a lineage of gender representation and techno-manipulation, complicating the relations between re/production and politics, labour ethics and going into labour.

Commissioners: Michael Gov and Arad Turgeman
Curators: Mira Lapidot and Tamar Margalit