ELANA KATZ

ELANA KATZ
SUN 06.02 @ 11:30AM – 7:30PM
dfb gallery
“THEY SAID IT WAS DRY”
www.elana-katz.com

RP13 photos by Myra Rodriguez
more on flickr

Elana Katz (US/Germany) is an American artist currently based in Berlin, Germany. Katz’s work confronts cultural conventions, critically examines the complexity that lies within contradictions, and thus aims to create an experience of unlearning the assumed. Katz is currently pursuing an ongoing project titled [Un]buried, that examines post-memory and absence at sites of historical erasure in Romania and Serbia, among other nations. Her recent grants have included the DAAD Graduate Studies Grant (2010) and the Franklin Furnace Fund (2011). She participated as a re-performer at Marina Abramovic’s retrospective at MoMA in New York, and has recently exhibited/performed at Location One, New York, USA (2011), Musée Royaux des Beaux Arts de Belgique, Belgium (2011), Freies Museum Berlin (2012), and P.P.O.W. Gallery, New York, USA (2013).

The room is filled with a light water mist, coming from the ceiling. In the middle of the space is a bed in which the artist lies, asleep. She has taken pills to induce sleep. The artist sleeps for 8 hours, slowly becoming increasingly wet.

This is an allegorical performance. That which ‘they’ – a nameless authority – say to be true is believed without question, regardless of blatant implications of the opposite. The image created is that of a person sleeping while slowly becoming soaking wet, yet believing that ‘it is dry’, with passive obedience. This stagnant image stands as a parallel to blind loyalty and obedience to authority structure within society.