Artist Statement

The young Franco-Israeli artist Elodie Abergel has been part of the “contextual art” movement for several years, coupling her artistic work with her associative commitment to “Zellige Paris-Jerusalem”, where she is both the founder and coordinator. After her studies in Fine Arts in Nantes, she moved to Jerusalem to pursue her work on what she calls the "Territories of Sharing" (“Territoires de Partages”)*.

Through her artistic vision and works, she has developed the concept of “art of the present moment”, offering up a humanistic yet poetic and critical view of politics in the Middle East. She identifies herself as a committed activist and sees this land as an open workshop. By immersing herself in the heart of the Israeli and Palestinian culture, she has developed an art which is participatory and engaging.

The focal point of her art is the territory she works within, the borders of which house her energy, whether they are visible or not. To convey this focus to her audience, she uses materials found in her surroundings, transforming them through different mediums (photography, installations, video, performance...) as a function of her expression. In her work, she also focuses on "repetition" to highlight the absurdity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

More recently, through her work, she has questioned the place of women in society and thus offers a sensitive look at the world which surrounds her, in particular by developing major photographic artwork in Paris, Salvadore de Bahia, Barcelona and New York.

Moreover in New York, where she has worked intermittently since 2013, the artist started a project still in progress on the underside of the American dream.

* A concept born in 2005, consisting of an art installation where individuals from different religious and cultural associations can interact. Traces of these exchanges are re-transcribed into new forms, creating a new territory, giving rise to the final project. The “Shared Territories” (“Territoires de Partages, T.D.P.”) are what Nicolas Bourriaud calls “relational aesthetics”.