Threshold

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Tal Shoshan is the ninth recipient of the Ann and Ari Rosenblatt Prize for Visual Art, an award that recognizes the research based, visual, and conceptual dimensions of the artist’s practice. The present exhibition is grounded in fragile relationships and raises questions about the boundaries, the weight of memory, and the tension between holding and unraveling.

The space reveals itself as a structure with thickness, recession, volume, and movement. Wooden frames define a territory; the textiles wrap around it and pass through it, spaces of pause and suspension. This is an architecture caught in a constant tension between holding and collapse, a moment in which the structure begins to undo the syntax that sustains it. The outer layer becomes a liminal zone that separates and connects, an open arena of protection, belonging, intrusion, and movement.

The encounter between textile and architecture allows Shoshan to examine how form takes shape through shifting relations. The wooden frames divide the space, inside and outside, establishing partitions and passages; within them, the textile operates through knitting, stitching, stretching, and unraveling, articulating a parallel system of connections and layers. Beam and seam, frame and thread, become parts of the same material syntax. Within this system, disassembly becomes a mode of thinking: the material act examines how spaces acquire boundaries, and how those boundaries begin to collapse inward upon themselves.

The technique embodies this process directly. Layers of paper are stitched into the textile, then wetted and peeled away until they become thin and translucent, allowing the work to be viewed from both sides. The material changes state, while the process exposes the hidden infrastructure that holds it together. Here, unraveling acts as a dismantling of order and structure: the thread released from the system carries the memory of the connection from which it has come undone, while opening the possibility of a new arrangement.

Extending from the installation into the space is a trumpet-like element, made from raw textile collage in fiery colors. Its form moves between a vessel for sound and a grounded interior space, with a soft, hidden feminine voice echoing within it, emerging from a body associated with power, proclamation, and calling. The encounter between the form and the soft, unraveled, vulnerable material from which it is made creates a tension between authority and fragility, between a voice seeking to be heard and a body struggling to hold its form. It carries the possibility of a call, a protest, or a gathering inward, turning the movement from inside to outside into an urgent spatial gesture.

In contrast, a black flag cuts across the installation on a heavy pole, penetrating the interior space and bringing with it the public marking of territory and protest. The pole cleaves through space, bringing the symbol into the realm of intimacy.

Between the trumpet and the flag, a double movement takes place: a voice emerging from within and a weight entering from without. Through them, Shoshan connects material, structural, and political systems, placing them on the threshold of unraveling. The outer layer becomes a site of negotiation, while the material remains exposed, as an invitation to a movement whose outcome has yet to be determined.

Nir Harmat, Curator