Israeli artist Orit Raff presents two films in her second solo
exhibition
at the Hosfelt Gallery. The first film, "Hunt-the-Slipper,"
revolves around
the mistranslation of the children's game, jeu du furet (game
of the
ferret). In the game, a child in the center of a circle of children
attempts
to locate a furry slipper that is passed behind their backs. In
the film
Raff juxtaposes an image of a weasel (i.e. ferret) snowy white
with the
exception of the very tip of its tail, camouflaged and running
in a snowy
landscape and a girl's feet, clad in furry slippers, jumping in
an empty
room. Both images are caught in ambiguous uncertainty, endlessly
circling, going nowhere, brilliantly illustrating the elusiveness
of meaning
referred to by Jacques Lacan in his use of the phrase ambiguité
de furet.
Raff's second film, "Palindrome," portrays two repetitive
images that in
the end converge into one: a young girl in an igloo performing
a Sisyphean
task trying to warm herself and the igloo and a coyote running
in a snowy
landscape. As with the first film, Raff deliberately keeps meaning
ambiguous
and multifaceted. Both the weasel and coyote are highly evolved
animals,
and both are historically associated with mythic, supernatural
powers. They
inhabit with easy grace a pure and natural landscape, unlike the
girl, who
is relegated to futile endeavors in constrained environments.
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