human ashes, dust and tape on paper; Dimension variable
From the exhibition catalog:
Yinon Avior has been concerned with dust since childhood. He attributes this preoccupation to a cleanliness anxiety, and has used his art on occasion as a means of coping with the presence of dirt and disorder. The series of works exhibited here was created while he was studying at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art: He carefully arranged on sheets of paper a mixture of dust and cigarette ash he picked up in the academy's halls, affixing it with transparent sticky tape. This repetitive act of constrained staining, as well as the tension between the pristine background and the pieces of dirt, project onto the white paper the ambivalence of attraction and repulsion, chaos and control. Like a scientist observing cells through a microscope or a child entranced by the dust motes dancing in a light beam, he contemplates with a sense of wonder this capsule encompassing leftovers of artistic activity and human existence. In his words, it is composed of "memory-bearing particles which, like DNA, carry within them the hereditary freight of life and death." Avior's family has its roots in Berlin, and the dust he collected on German soil has a special personal significance for him: in "Ashes and Dust" he hints at his family's history and at the culture that nurtured a regime of cleanliness which culminated so chillingly in the doctrine of "ethnic purity."
Dr. Tami Manor-Friedman
Yinon Avior has been concerned with dust since childhood. He attributes this preoccupation to a cleanliness anxiety, and has used his art on occasion as a means of coping with the presence of dirt and disorder. The series of works exhibited here was created while he was studying at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art: He carefully arranged on sheets of paper a mixture of dust and cigarette ash he picked up in the academy's halls, affixing it with transparent sticky tape. This repetitive act of constrained staining, as well as the tension between the pristine background and the pieces of dirt, project onto the white paper the ambivalence of attraction and repulsion, chaos and control. Like a scientist observing cells through a microscope or a child entranced by the dust motes dancing in a light beam, he contemplates with a sense of wonder this capsule encompassing leftovers of artistic activity and human existence. In his words, it is composed of "memory-bearing particles which, like DNA, carry within them the hereditary freight of life and death." Avior's family has its roots in Berlin, and the dust he collected on German soil has a special personal significance for him: in "Ashes and Dust" he hints at his family's history and at the culture that nurtured a regime of cleanliness which culminated so chillingly in the doctrine of "ethnic purity."
Dr. Tami Manor-Friedman
Ashes and Dust – Installation view, 2013 at Israel Museum of Art, Jerusalem, Israel
Ashes and Dust – Installation view, 2013 at Israel Museum of Art, Jerusalem, Israel