10/08/2007. Venice. Arsenale day two: Israel, Tomer Granihar. Hospital Party.

I realize that the two artists that I choose for both the Biennale and the Arsenale are dealing with political subjects, but I think that they can be compared and are actually very much alike. They are both choosing to play with the idea of war and address it in a controversial way. They are not just stating that war is bad and that we shouldn’t do it. They are trying to get people to examine the awful affects it actually does have on the people who are forced to live it. I think it is a type of art that affect the people who live in the US a lot, because we are not forced to live with war in our daily lives. We do not have to fear going to the grocery store or going down the street to visit a friend. But there are millions of people whom have to worry about that and whose lives are very affected from the byproducts of war.

Granihar’s exhibit was made up of photos that he had taken of victims of the war that is going on in Israel and Palestine. However these photographs were not taken of actual people. They were staged with mannequins that look like they have been inured or killed in war. One of the images I liked the best was of this photograph of a mannequin that was lying on a blanket with its eyes wide open and some medical wires connected to it, but there are no doctors or medics around it. The expression on this mannequin’s face that Granihar was able to capture is heartbreaking, repulsive and creepy all at the same time. The mannequin looks like it has, just at that moment, had the life pulled out of it so suddenly that the body did not even know what was going on. The mannequin’s face looks almost shocked. It is this shocked look that sends chills down my back and tears in my eyes. But it is the fact that I have these feelings for a mannequin that makes this exhibit very moving and humane. It shows that there is some compassion in the world, even if and when people are constantly killing each other every day.

If an artist can make you feel all these things while you are viewing an inanimate object, not just because they are supposedly injured, but because in actuality they are only dolls.

This is the strong point in Granihar’s exhibit. He is able to evoke emotion with a subject that is completely and utterly inanimate. He is able to take an object that does not have any human qualities except physical appearance and give those object feelings, lives, a past and a family. He is capable of giving this object all the attributes of a human life with just one still image. His presentation of these images is also very important. He had three walls that had one picture after the other, blown up and put in thin black frames. This way you could not ignore the images, they were right there in your face and you saw one after the other. Putting them in a line like this gives more of an assurance that people will start from one side and go to the other looking at each image. Had they been organized differently, it might have been easy to skip over one of them because we look at things very linearly. If images are set in front of us top to bottom, we wonder which direction to start. But when images are put in a straight line, horizontally, then we automatically start from left and go to the right. It is also a very clean way to display the images without taking away from any of them.

In the way that Adel Abidin created an atmosphere in her exhibit, Granihar created a feeling of uneasiness. Which with most war exhibits, is a pretty easy thing to do. No one really wants to see images from war. No one wants to see the carnage of bodies, the dead, the dying and the suffering. The feeling that Granihar gave off in his exhibit was not just uneasiness it was a feeling of eerie disgust. His exhibit was disturbing because the images were not of real people. In an ironic turn of events, he was able to create sympathy with an inanimate object that most people might not feel with the real thing. Had the images just been of actual people and the horrors of war, people would probably feel disturbed but they might not feel empathy because no one ever wants to think of themselves in such a position. With the mannequins, however, it is possible to stop a minute and imagine what it would be like if you were living the life of someone who has to deal with that shit everyday.