I do not believe in history, rather that history is a construction. I believe that history is about who is talking β it is reactive. For over four decades, Paris-based Esther Shalev-Gerz has been examining history and identity construction through a poetic form of looking and telling, questioning and answering.
She has created a substantial body of work that integrates the voice into the genre of portraiture. Using media such as video, photography, 3D animation, text, sound, sculpture, installation and public space intervention, Shalev-Gerz has reframed expectations about what we know, what we share, and why we tell stories of belonging.
In her preference for using machine-generated images, one might view her as a kind of techno-magic realist, someone who is interested in capturing the moment a spirit is generated in front of the camera. From the beginning of her practice, Shalev-Gerz has been engaged in project commissions that situate others in the position of talking, integrating their realities into her observations without destabilizing or co-opting their voice.
She has built on collaboration as a concept, pushing its boundaries to expand on the potential of sharing in various formats: as participant, reader, viewer, actor, artist. Collaboration in representation, specifically through the camera and sound recordings, offers the potential to think from the perspective of others, to unite thinking and social reality β which is the task of art, according to political theorist Hannah Arendt. While removed from their original locale and context in cultural centres in Europe, they function independently of their commission sites.
Shalev-Gerz chose to work with the Gold Room, a museum gallery named after the precious metal of the objects primarily featured in this space. The artist asked five curators of the collection to each speak about an artefact that they felt was most important, and five refugees to Stockholm to tell a story about the one thing they could not have left behind on their journey to Sweden. The newcomers agreed to lend their objects β a cross, a watch, a diploma, a necklace, a Madonna β for installation in the Gold Room for the duration of the project in the same vitrine with the artefacts from the collection.
