Adi Liraz

MY FLUID BODY

06 November 2018

INVITED by DANIEL WIESENFELD

Our bodies carry our personal and political histories. These re-inscribe our internal and external world. Our actions in any social space are to a certain extent guided and shaped by theses scripts; sometimes, to such extent that we reproduce our ancestral past without any conscious awareness. This work researches through collecting, archiving and re-creating textiles and performing the story of Liraz’s grandmother, her mother, and her great grandmother.

By doing this, the artist shapes a Jewish identity which is independent from the colonial idea and previous to the Shoah, and rooted in the rich past of the Jewish community in Ioannina, Greece. In this art performance, Liraz tells a personal story which re-creates a process of embodying history/ies and being alive as shaped and shifted by the colonial and patriarchal gaze of German and Israeli nationalism. She explores the inscribed past of previous generations of her family in her own body, marking the connection between the personal and the collective.

Liraz’s attempt is to question the Jewish entity as one, and to create a sense of solidarity of fluid identities contextualised by political grounds. Adi Liraz is an interdisciplinary and performance artist. In her work, she often bridges private and public experiences, discourses and spaces. She reflects on her personal and collective identity, particularly on her role in society as a migrant, woman and mother. Her tools are text and textile which she uses to create objects, Installations and interactive performances.

The aim of Liraz´s work is to generate communication and critical exposure of hegemonic perceptions and to give voice to marginalized stories through creating a fabric of solidarity.