The Movement for the Liberation of our Narrative - 2018
The installation included an interactive space and 12 short animated videos.
You can watch them in Animations. To read more about MLN please refer to Writings.
Hereticha Be'eynecha - 2013
“Hereticha Be’eynecha” is an audio video installation. Using large-scale prints on translucent surfaces, Palombo processes texts and ancient melodies from the Hebrew Bible. She focuses on a textual junction within the narrative: The end of the journey in the wilderness and the beginning of the narrative the story of the creation, are always being read together and form a circular dynamic. The installation hopes to challenge inner Gestalts and emotional filters that distort realities to fix and to fit to a larger collective narrative.
We assume that the text communicates an epic conclusion in which the spiritual leader-Moses is summoned to the peak of the mountain, is shown the Promised Land and is not permitted to enter it. And yet the text simply says -“Hereticha Be’eynecha” which translates to – “I let you see who you are with your own eyes.” The ultimate goal of self-transformation and actualization: Reaching the level of maturity of seeing and claiming the ultimate self and through it one’s responsibilities and connections to its natural and human surroundings.
Special thanks to-
Donn De Santo- Double Bass and sound designer.
Vocalists- Debby Bard and Michael Davis.
Fadeout - 2011
Installation by the artist Granite Palombo-Amit and the Computer Scientist Yali Amit. The installation is composed of large-scale digital prints on translucent fabrics and a video of a natural interaction animation program. Different experiences of fadeout are explored from the physical, emotional, cognitive and visual perspectives. The loss of a loved one, the loss of memories, changes in transparency, changes in scale or gradual decomposition into elements.
The video begins with animated text designed with AfterEffects. It then flows into the output of an animation program based on 'natural interaction': tracking body motion to affect computer output - in this case: text animation, revealing the performer's role as the 'real activator' and the force behind the dynamics, the appearance and the disappearance of the words. As objects decompose to constituent parts and fade out, different layers of meaning unfold.
Photos by Inbal Amit-Palombo
Bach Is Everything - 2010-2011
A dance theater performance documented by Inbal Amit-Palombo
Prints on lenticular lenses
The following text is included in the piece-
David, my beloved handicapped student, is blind, with recurrent seizures, severe autism, and history of sexual abuse.
He appears catatonic but responds to the music of Bach.
He rises from his wheelchair and moves slowly, twisted, transforming into a total Butoh dancer with gestural body that communicates the sublime oblivion and the ridiculous, the awkward and the eloquent, the grotesque and the lucid.
He creeps to the speakers, licks them and illuminated with an angelic smile cries-
- "Help, beautiful, help"
Defining for us the negative space of our awareness.
"When I begin to wish I was crippled... when I am perfectly healthy, or rather that I would have been better off born a cripple, that is the first step toward Butoh"
- Tasumi Hijikata
Merkava - 2008
The installation Merkava is composed of large images printed on shattered Plexiglas, a sound track, and a video projection of animated text, which is the English translation of the prophetic vision of Ezekiel. The sound track is a recording of an ancient chant of the text by the vocalist Deborah Bard, processed with the help of the sound engineer Don De Santo.
L.e.d. proximity - 2006
In this installation I step away from the role of the protagonist and let the community speak.
In L.E.D. Proximity, people were asked to contribute short texts that capture human maneuvers of engaging the other in a conversation: being demanding, fragile, absurd, and poetic, with a sense of humor...
More than 400 suggestions were sent back, and were displayed on six different L.E.D. signs around the Chicago area among other advertisements, during the period of the exhibition.
Inside the Hyde Park Art Center, two projections run simultaneously - an attempt to establish a dialogue, at times by content, at times by motion. Projected on the right hand screen was a written text of mine, while texts appearing on the left screen, were contributed by the community and visitors.
A computer program was designed inviting people who came to the gallery to insert their own thoughts to the on going projection on the left screen, which became part of an accumulating ongoing projection. (I address in this piece our capacity for communication, while defining and exploring our surroundings beyond the physical, given premises - how we create a secondary space, as real as the physical one, by the positions of proximity and distance that we choose to express, while communicating.)
The Post-Narrative - 2006
Mixed Media pieces- large scale prints on Plexiglas and metal, including animated texts played in small LED TV screens that were integrated within the pieces.
The installation was based on a semi-autobiographical text, which was a constantly reinvented personal narration referring to an old Jewish mystic text, yet suggesting new alternative interpretations of portrayed events.
Installed at ARC gallery and at the Fourth Presbyterian Church.
Whatever Is within Is Also Without - 2004
The installation contains sheer printed fabrics in the shape of a suspended house, painted plan floor of houses, and a video projection of animated text. In the projected text an early recollection is bridged to a present event of memory loss.
A memory, beyond its narrative, embodies a statement, a conviction, a belief. Both the transparent house and the early recollection are used as symbols which attempt, but fail, to contain the personal narrative. With pain but also with a new sense of relief, the self frees itself from the burden of remembering stories.
Since "words are made of air and meant to be forgotten" the text concludes with the last meeting with my mother who suffered from dementia. In this meeting we both know that it will be the last time that she would be able to identify me as her daughter.
Poetic Dialog - 2004
A collaboration of artists and poets, responding one to another in art making, showed in several venues. A joint work with the poet - Jan Beatty.
A Perceptual Conversation - 2004
Grapes of Wrath - 2002
'Grapes of Wrath' was done in the midst of the second Intifada, from an Israeli perspective on the Israel/Palestine conflict. Going back in time to the transition point in history where one group of people ended their state of exile, while the other commenced it, and linking back to current events which endure constant escalation of wrath. I invite the viewer to this sensory space, which represents my own penetrating and sad journey of being informed about the profound and tragic transition that occurred In 1948.
10 sheer fabrics (9'x4' each) of ink-jet projection are visually processed maps, showing 400 Palestinian villages that existed in 1947, and were replaced in 1948, by Israeli communities. The tenth fabric, a circulated email by the Jewish Chairperson of the Families Forum - A Palestinian-Israeli organization of parents who lost their children to terror acts. It is a most powerful and poetic statement in which he uses his personal pain to say that what should precede pragmatic solutions is expressing a singular, simple yet hard gesture of saying- I am sorry.
Bottles of wine, named Grapes of Wrath, were arranged on the floor. On the back of each wine bottle attached data regarding current Israeli policy in the West Bank, and at the time of the exhibition - Gaza Strip.
No visual effects were inserted in the video presentation of the installation. People entered the location with videos cameras documenting their sensation of a labyrinth like space were visuals become symbols, reflecting on one's choice to ignore and marginalize information of others' predicaments - or not.
Piece Process
2002-2010
Granite Palombo organized a group of Jewish- and Palestinian-American artists in the attempt to provide uncensored and safe space for active dialog and mutual support as a response to the Islamophobia that emerged after 9/11.
The group exhibited nationally and met when installing the exhibitions. The group’s commitment to respectful and honest dialog inspired connections and solidarity among communities and institutions that had no prior contact.
Asifism - 2000-2001
A mixed media body of work consisting of visual interpretations of Sacred texts.
These texts which by their very nature elicit multi-layered comprehensions were used as symbols of (my) individual mechanisms of re-editing personal narratives. Since identity is composed of fiction (narratives which accrued in the past) I may knowingly or unconsciously insert false elements, in order to maintain a sense of stability, continuity and correlation of life events.