Israeli artist Achia Anzi tried to recreate hidden mysteries of the earth through his installations. He tells Arjita Mishra that everything on the planet has its own quality which we usually ignore or overlook
In the shoes vibrates the silent call of the earth, its quite gift of the ripening grain and its unexplained self refusal in the fallow desoulation of wintery field’ - inspired from this line of Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher, Israeli artist Achia Anzi presented his latest artwork titled The silent call of earth. “It is a site-specific project which explores the notion of earth in contemporary culture,” explained Anzi about the title of his exhibition..
Anzi wanted to tell people about the earth in his own way or through his art installation. According to him, “The idea of earth that inspired me was there is something covered in our technology, science which not always explains the phenomenon of the earth. The work of art has the possibility of showing earth without any definition or boundation , just the way it is like mystery. So, my job in this exhibition is to recreate that mystery again.”
As Anzi is been influenced by Heidegger’ philosophy that every object has its own mystery and each object reveals something that cannot be revealed through science or even philosophy, this exhibition explores the mystery of the objects like kiln, parking meter, a large rectangular structure that hangs in the centre of one of the rooms, a baricator or a cotton tree. “Every work or thing has its own story to tell,” said the artist.
His one of the installation which was a large structure of wall in the shape of chimney, installed in the centre of the room was describing that with the use of these chimneys, the fertility of the soil reducing day by day. According to Anzi, he was influenced by the labours who work at the chimneys for this installation. “The labour use the land to create bricks and therefore the soil loses its fertility and then they cannot use the land for agriculture. So this is coming from their critical prospective,” he said.
In the next installation, which also showed his critical perspective to the use of land was metal rod, in the patch of overturned earth, placed in the lawns of the house, denoted the replacing the fields of wheat, rice and barley that are usually cultivated on agrarian pastures. Through this work the artist wanted to show the difference between settled and developed cities, the life of rural and urban society.
In a room on the first floor of the house, there was a parking meter installed which symbolizes the time and space. Explain this installation of artwork, Anzi said, “The time and space philosophy are considered to be like very fixed and firm category which in our capitalist era becoming more fragile and not so defined. This parking meter shows time which control space. So, the space itself is vanishing at the moment your time or money is finished.”
“Everything on the earth has its own quality which we usually ignore or overlook, but through my art work, I have tried to bring out the meaning behind every object,” concluded Anzi.