Artist Statement

Public Domain is a photography series that documents the tactile surface of bomb shelters which Ishay describes as “implanted like alien corn in the public space”.

Throughout 2007 and 2009 Ishay photographed bomb shelters in the peripheral areas of Israel, from north to south. Ishay ‘s intention was to construct a “typological body” of work showing empty shelters in which their presence accentuated and made more conspicuous.

Ishay describes this work as “not just a document of civilian life under a regime of continuous emergency, but also a display of minimalistic monoliths, and how the surrounding community utilizes them daily.” She explains that her photography “acts as a document of construction, ornamentation and social interaction with the built environment, and as a narrative of threat and normality, of abstraction and anxiety, a way of tracing types of form, size and colour.”

Artist Bio

Orit Ishay (b.1961) is an artist living and working in Isael. She works most often in photography and video.

In 2009 she won a Yehoshua Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts Award, and in 2007-08 and 2006-07 she received The America-Israel Cultural Foundation Award in Fine Arts.

She had several solo exhibitions and group exhibitions in Israel and internationally. Her works are in The Israel Museum collection and in private collections both in Israel and abroad.

For further information please see http://www.oritishay.co.il/