Nelly Agassi
PEEL-IN
Single Channel Video
2002

“…the body is much more than an instrument or a means; it is our expression in the world, the visible form of our inten- tions. “ I rub my face softly but firmly with kosher salt. Irub the sur- face trying to erase mediation, creating a link between the private and public, the quo- tidian and the symbolic or cer- emonial. The salt is painfully cleansing my emotional inner landscape. I dig-in to travel unfamiliar lands and territories that are mine, that are patched togeth- er and stitched out of my biog- raphy. Peel-in is a pun on the cos- metic term “peeling” which denotes the removal of layers of skin to achieve a smooth and young-looking complex- ion. In this work, the inward peeling attempts to reach the emotional nerve center and lay bare the most essential kernel of being. The action of Peel-in is an ambivalent borderline––mark- ing the relationship between beauty and pain––as the per- ception of an alchemist where the vulnerable and fragile is also strength. I work unconstrained and from intuition where an emotion be- comes image.

About the artist

Born in 1973, Israel. Nelly Agassi lives and works in Tel Aviv. She draws inspiration from the female body, sometimes using her own body and biography as the subject her work. Through this work, Agassi explores and comments on the notion of physical presence especially pertaining to the female identity. Agassi uses self-expression and her own body as an instrument to obtain a universal human language for her audience to understand. Agassi has participated in over ten solo shows internationally since 1997, when she premiered with a project where she knitted a dress around her body. Her work is part of the public collections of The Tel Aviv Art Museum, and the Israeli Museum in Jerusalem.

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Courtesy: Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv and Keitelman Gallery, Bruxelles