Morning Prayer, 2024
The artwork Morning Prayer is a site-specific installation created collaboratively with Roni Kim and Omer Chach. The installation engages with time and space in two main ways. One involves architectural intervention, where the artists enveloped the gallery's vitrine with a sponge, reshaping the structure into a soft facade. The second involves a sound piece that samples voices, generated through artificial intelligence, reciting texts written by the artists. This sound installation accompanies the viewer as they move towards the space.
The work seeks to provoke identification and attention within the hectic and compressed reality of Alia Street in Tel Aviv. The padded vitrine is a soft monolith, inviting touch while simultaneously blocking and concealing. The recited and sung voice is calming, at times comical, but also creates an intimate enclosure. It is a familiar voice, resembling a mournful chant, oscillating between comforting and threatening.
Kim, Simhayof and Chach chose to address the central element characterizing the vitrine display - visibility - and subvert it. The deliberate limitation of the act of observation arises from the decision to direct the action towards the other side of the vitrine, towards the street. This protective layer necessarily fails: the sponge is exposed to rain, sun, human encounters, and bears the marks of these elements. As a complementary action, the voice calling out to the street crosses the boundaries of the vitrine, inviting the observer to approach and seeking to provide shelter within the public space and from it.
