Nati Shamia - Opher

Click here for sellected works

Biographical Notes

born in Israel in 1965

1986-90 Graduated from the Art Department of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem
1990-93 Graduated from the Department of Industrial Design at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem
Since 1997 Teaching at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem

Solo Exhibitions

1991 - Bograshov Gallery, Tel-Aviv
1994 - "24 Decibels Altogether", Bograshov 1 Gallery, Tel Aviv Portfolio, Bograshov 2 Gallery, Tel Aviv
1996 - "Touching within Public Spaces" in Mishkenot Sha'ananim
1998 - "In Public" - Heinrich B?ll Foundation
2003 - "Itching and Digging", Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv
2004 - "Land E Scape", The Herzliya Museum of Art
2008 - Tree House, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv

Group Exhibitions

1990 - Bograshov Gallery, Tel Aviv.
1990 - "Sculpture in the Tower", The Tower Gallery, Tel Aviv
1991 - America-Israel Cultural Foundation Sharett Scholarship Winners' Exhibition, Ramat Gan Museum
1992 - America-Israel Cultural Foundation Sharett Scholarship Winners' Exhibition, Ramat Gan Museum
1993 - America-Israel Cultural Foundation Sharett Scholarship Winners' Exhibition, The Genia Schrieber University Art Galley, Tel Aviv University
1993 - "Four Private Cases", Rehovot, Muncipal Art Gallery
1993 - "Third Body", Bograshov Gallery and Camera Obscura Gallery, Tel Aviv
1994 - Young artists Prize Winner' Exhibition Artists' House, Tel Aviv
1994 - "The Suitcase", Bograshov Gallery, Tel Aviv
1994 - "Work Cabinet" Artist's House, Tel Aviv
1994 - Tel Hai Events
1995 - "Home-Work" The Herzliya Museum of Art
1995 - "90>70>90", Tel Aviv Museum of Art
1995 - "Export" Sculptures" and "Terminal", Bograshov Gallery, Tel Aviv
1995 - UNESCO Prize for the promotion of the Arts, Candidates' Exhibition, UNESCO House, Paris
1995 - America-Israel Cultural Foundation Sharett Scholarship Winners' Exhibition, The Genia Schrieber University Art Galley, Tel Aviv University
1995 - "November Salon", Contemporary Art of Daphna Naor's Place, Jerusalem
1996 - "Meuzan" ("Horizontal"), Artist's House, Tel Aviv
2002 - Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, Noga Gallery, Tel Aviv
2002 - "Everything starts at Home", 'Comme il Faut' House, Tel Aviv
2003 - Head guard - Design takes on risks, The Bezalel Academy Gallery of Art and Design, Tel Aviv
2004 - "Barefoot in Tokyo", Designer Block, Tokyo
2004 - Performance: "Planting", The Herzliya Museum of Art
2004 - Dotfiftyone, Miami, Fl
2005 - Following Shemi, the Art Gallery, University of Haifa
2005 - Installation Situation, Haifa Museum of Art
2005 - Little Red Riding Hood, Dot51, Miami
2006 - Landscape, Dot51, Miami
2006 - Solos: New Design from Israel, Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York
2006 - Performance: Tetris, a joint project with the choreographer Noa Dar, The Acco Festival for Alternative Theatre
2007 - The Space Between, Petach-Tikva Museum of Art, Petach-Tikva
2007 - Passing the Batonette, Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa
2007 - Performance: Tetris, a joint project with the choreographer Noa Dar, Shanghai Dance Festival
2008 - Performance: Tetris, a joint project with the choreographer Noa Dar, International Theatre Festival “Santiago a Mil”, Chile
2008 - Minister of Science, Culture and Sport Awards Exhibition, Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa

Grants and Awards

1991-94 America-Israel Cultural Foundation Sharett Scholarship
1993 - Young Artists Prize, Culture and Art Administration
1995 - Artist' Incentive Found Scholarship - "Takam"
2002 - Mifal HaPais (National Lottery) grant for the publication of book about the artist
2006 - Honorable Mention Award, The Acco Festival for Alternative Theatre
2007 - Minister of Science, Culture and Sport Award

About Shamia - Opher's Work

Nati Shamia-Opher formulates options for physical experiences. A simulation of proceeding in actual, virtual or fictional space that enables the body to carry the memory of its existence. An existence that preserves, documents and remembers the footsteps and the presence of the body in space.
This move is part of an examination carried out by the artiest in recent years, in private and public spaces, an examination of the extent of the relation between the body and an object in a given space, with objects functioning as an essence that indicates and making presents the body and its possible actions.
In a space that does not preserve traces or inscribes activities, a space that erases every remainder of movement and every mark of its existence. In a clean, empty space, ready for endless absorption and emptying of the presence of the concrete body, she creates a disturbance. Series of objects representing options for documenting, remembering and realization.
She accumulates objects in the field, an accumulation of signs, those marking territory and activity. Signs in various state of matters that accumulate from the succession and increment to a mass of signs. Signs in public.
A succession of pairs of shoes against a wall, in a vertical line to an object - a table - sleep. The shoes are covered with lycra that looks like a tight skin. The shoes are preserved, fixed, unidentifiable and non-objectable. Besides each shoe there is an opening - a notch in the lycra that enables a hand to filter into it. An entrance into an under-the-skin state. The preserved and fixed object enables activity, but a different activity: touching, feeling, sensing, without seeing, taking, objectivizing it
It is more of a memory of shoes, a memory of the moment the foot was pulled out of the shoe. A memory of an order, of a situation that can be returned to. A marking of a territory in space, a marking of human presence with its variety of activities, copied into alternative movement situations: sleep, sitting around a table or walking barefoot.
Three pillows on the wall, and underneath them three computer simulations. Interior pillow, accessories that are pseudo-functional for postures of a sleeping body. Pillows pushed on the body, forced on the body. Pillows indicating a negative space that is supposed to be closed. It is an experiment to clinically examine how the human body behaves in a regimented space. The scale of the body is taken. A negative of the body's dimensions is formed. The touching points of the body with the object, with the bed. With the space, are indicated. It is an attempt to unite the body's positive and negative. To create a unity, a succession, a relation between the body and the bed, the body and the space, thus expanding the body's boundaries.
In the center of the room a central element, table-like: it is a reference to the elongated conference table place in the opposite room-space reflected through the glass doors. The element is made of a construction wrapped in lycra and hung from the ceiling. To its length there are depressions, water bags in which wide-open books are floating. The book's parting reveals an image of woman's hair parting in a state of sleep. The book's parting testifies an order, a structural logic related to language, to the weigh of pages, to the knowledge acquired on a time axis of turning pages: begin reading, end reading. The changing hair parting from book to book testifies to fragmentation of the sleeping time, to a change of posture, non-productive, non-functional repetitive movement, a movement within a sub-conscious state in order to find equilibrium.
Fluid bags, preservation fluids, preserving an intimate, sexual moment of exposing the structure of the hair roots. The depression is formed by the weight of the water placing its mark on the lycra, like the mark of the head's posture on the pillow. A head floating in water, part living-body part dead-body. The boundary between sleep and dead.
In the table-like object there is a suggestion of a sleeping tunnel, an intimate tunnel, a functional space, an invitation to sleep, a common collective convergence. The public sleep of an individual.
On the wall, under the three pillow, there are three computer simulations: a sleep laboratory, a suggestion of sleeping in public. A suggestion of sleeping vertically, ignoring the pull of gravity. Vertical sleeping tunnels, parallel to each other like sleeping compartments on a train or in outer space. Niches, burial caves, sleeping and dying space, a convergence inwards, to the center of the body, to the point of minimization and disappearance. Dealing with a minimal space surrounding each person, a space that enables protection and privacy. A minimal space indicated by friction points, transition points, a boundary that is diffuse - diffusing from the public to the private and vice versa. A sleep that is a cortex - a negative - a sub-space - an atmosphere.
A projection of the concrete body onto a theoretical resting place. An instinctive, automatic projection, created by the relation between the weariness of the concrete body and the indication of the empty space waiting to be filled, to hold something inside it. A simulation of sleep in an alienated, sterile, transient place, but at the same time a place that enables insulation and protection as a result of the elevation from the floor to a high place, and the lack of the invasive viewpoint into the territory of sleep. Cortex, wrapping, intimacy.
A state of indecision, inability, impossibility, of realizing the body that is active in space, turn into the starting point for a transition into another experience. A condition of self gathering and expanding the boundaries of the body by creating a double skin. The perception of the tunnel wrapping as an anatomic addition that enables a private space, an atmosphere, the forming of a public sub-space in which the body has a place to carry the memory of its existence.

Tal Ben-Zvi, 1998