Entitled “Night Vision,” the exhibition of Karam Natour (*1992, Nazareth; lives and works in Tel Aviv-Yafo) at CCA Tel Aviv-Yafo, continues the artist’s interest in the power of language, and specifically how translation becomes a unique vehicle for a deeper understanding of issues connected to identity, race and gender. Autobiographical, yet not directly so, truly performative, and always through the filter of the camera, the work of Karam Natour takes distinctive elements of his own self in order to trigger questions that go beyond the person he (Karam Natour) is and what he represents in Israel and in the Middle East at large.

Commissioned by CCA Tel Aviv-Yafo for this exhibition, Enter The View is a video work based on the artist’s ongoing interest in the crucial role played by language within the formation, creation, alteration and fragmentation of our identity. A parody of the so-called “late-night talk shows,” which are part of American television but have famously influenced Western culture and beyond, in Enter The View we see the artist being interviewed in this distinctive manner. However such format, that of the interview, takes a bizarre turn, putting both the interviewer (an actor and comedian hired by Natour) and the interviewee (Natour himself) in uncomfortable situations. Referring to both Gaspar Noé’s experimental drama art film Enter the Void (2009) and The Eric Andre Show, an American surreal comedy television series which began airing in 2012, the video is the latest window into Natour’s unique, humorous and bizarre ‘universe’.

Alongside the presentation of this new commission, CCA Tel Aviv-Yafo will also publish Jester Lux, an artist book dedicated to Natour’s so-called digital drawings (some of them were presented in the sphere of social media and some others never presented before) in which the artist – via Jester, his “nonhuman collaborator” – appears as the protagonists of surreal scenarios and absurd situations, mixing elements from art history (pop art), literature (Alice in Wonderland), history (Ancient Egypt) and culture (the figure of the donkey in the Middle East.)

“Karam Natour: Night Vision” is curated by Nicola Trezzi and Bar Goren.

The exhibition is accompanied by printed matter in Hebrew, Arabic and English and an artist talk and book launch in English on April 28, an exhibition tour in Hebrew on May 8 and a conversation between the artist and Yotam Laor, also in Hebrew, on June 14.

“Karam Natour: Night Vision” is supported by Mifal HaPais Council for the Culture and Arts, the Ostrovsky Family Fund (OFF), the Yehoshua Rabinovich Tel Aviv Foundation for the Arts, and Artis; additional support has been provided by Nathalie Mamane-Cohen and Jean-Daniel Cohen, Edna and Avital Fast, Ann and Dr. Ari Rosenblatt, Rivka Saker, Sabra Collection, KADIST Paris—San Francisco, and those who wish to remain anonymous; special thanks to Rosenfeld Gallery, Tel Aviv.

Images

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“Night Vision,” 2021

View of the exhibition at CCA Tel Aviv-Yafo

Photo: Eyal Agivayev

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Enter the View, 2021

Video still

Courtesy of the artist and Rosenfeld Gallery, Tel Aviv-Yafo