Field RESIDENT, Jan 22, - Mar 5, 2022
OPEN STudio: March 5, 2-6pm
Shasha Dothan
My installations transform spaces through the immersion of painting, video art and a continuous discourse with visitors. My art reveals an ongoing debate between the power structures that built my way of thought and my subjective experience. My work addresses conflicts: being a queer woman, an Israeli, an immigrant to the USA, an occupier, a victim and an oppressor. My work is always deeply inspired by the environment I live in. Whatever surrounds me transforms into an installation.
Biographical Statement
Shasha Dothan (b. 1987 Tel-Aviv) is a Brooklyn-based artist working with video, installation, poetry and sound. She creates immersive experiences that connect fragments of her personal history. Exhibitions include the Ramat Gan Museum of Israeli Art, Ramat Gan; Petach Tikva Museum of Art, Petah Tikva; Blum & Poe, Los Angeles; Human Resources, Los Angeles; Erica Broussard Gallery, Santa Ana; American Jewish University, Los Angeles; Jerusalem Cultural Season, Jerusalem; University at Buffalo Art Galleries, Buffalo: Ashdod museum of Art, Ashdod and MCLA Gallery 51,MA . Dothan received an MFA from University of California Los Angeles (2018), and a BFA from Shenkar College (2013). Awards and scholarships include the John Baldessari Family Foundation Scholarship (2017-18); Young Artist Award from the Israeli Ministry of culture (2018); Word prize from AJU; Asylum Arts Grant; Philip & Muriel Berman Foundation Grant (2019) Adams Family Foundation, Young Artist Award (2020) and the Artis residency grant for Vermont Studio center and NARS Foundation . She was an artist in residence at NARS Foundation, Mass Moca, Byrdcliffe and Vermont Studio center. She is a founding member of the art collective Anti Mehikon.
DOTHAN’S PROJECT:
My new film is an experimental documentary examining how identities shift in response to cultural settings. In this film I use self-documentation in unfamiliar territories, as a queer immigrant woman living between countries and languages.
For thirty years I lived in a dream that wasn’t mine. I lived the expectations of other people around me. I lived in my ex husband's dream, his career and me at home raising our future kids .I always said ‘yes this is the life I want but I also don’t want to make plans’. I lived my parents dream of being married to a nice guy that one day will provide me with everything me and our future kid would need . I wanted to go to the USA and get my MFA. I was lucky to get into UCLA and get full scholarships. I came with my husband . Suddenly I saw where we came from and I saw how traditional it is . I went to an art residency and met my now Wife . Left my country left my heteronormative life left the being married to a jew. I left everything that was familiar to me and I call my wife my American dream come true but what do I know about the American dream and maybe I’m living in another dream that is not mine . My film is my journey to sexual, religious and nationality freedom. Struggling with the new world still not knowing where I belong.
Field Residency
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