Tea on a Raft with the Countess of Chinchón

Hanita Schwartz

The book ‘Pictura Moderna’, featuring modern art works from the 19^th and 20^th centuries, has been serving as a source of inspiration for the work of artist Hanita Schwartz from 2015 to this day. Using detergent and a cleaning cloth, Schwartz carves in the book as if it were an archaeological dig site. In a slow and painstaking process, she unearths findings, selects and cleans, and then creates a new world of images from what remains.

In the process of erasing and reduction, the pictures on the pages of the book shake off their original composition and the structured and familiar layout. The conventional leafing through the pages is replaced with a deep, multi-level browsing, and the new images that rise from the pages propose a new reading of the history of art. The act of reduction and cleaning also leaves behind some abstract or blank pages, like a kind of palimpsest (an ancient manuscript written on parchment after the previous writing was erased from it) waiting to be rewritten. By opening holes and spaces and adding new layers, Schwartz weaves a complex net of information. This net allows non-linear movement between different periods and different works in the book. The images and objects placed in the gallery space blur the boundaries between truth and fiction. While seemingly leisurely wandering, they confront the viewer with essential problems of human morality, ask questions about the artistic canon and defy the patriarchal hegemony that dictated it.

In what world could Schwartz’s Countess of Chinchón in her current version exist? What would her teacup look like? How long would it take to drink from it? Would she try to taste the pile of crumbs that was unraveled from her world? Would she choose to rest on the reconstructed raft of the medusa from Géricault’s painting? Would she revive the charged story of the demise of those who sat on the raft before her, or, perhaps, would she erase their existence from the pages of history forever?

Hanita Schwartz, a multidisciplinary artist, born in Israel, has been working and living in the United States for over two decades.  This body of work is part of a larger one that has been exhibited in various galleries in the United States. Showing it here, in Israel, charges the dialogue with past culture with new issues that are relevant to the present time, arising from their connection to the local space. Through her work, Schwartz relates to the erasure and rewriting of history, to the blurring of boundaries between truth and fiction, and the erosion of our moral standards as individuals and a society.

Arit Gordon, curator