Opening reception: Thursday 26 May, 7 – 9pm

The series ‘Beyond Guilt’ addresses the undermining power relationship between the photographer and the photographed, men and women, the public domain and the private sphere, object and subject. As the films directors, Sela and Amir take an active part in the event. They seduce the interviewees on the one hand, and turn the camera over to them on the other as part of the relationship between the photographer and subject.

The choice of pick-up bar or hotel rooms as shooting locations strives to represent an underworld with its own language and signifiers. The quick encounter before the camera calls to mind the ephemeral nature of intimate relations, but above all the works allude to the influence of the occupation, terror and army as constitutors of an Israeli identity in the most private moments. The sexual identity and the military-political identity seem inseparably intertwined.

Through dealing with radical dispositions Sela and Amir observe the boundaries of the individual’s autonomy within the arrangement of forces and interests that surrounds them. Through the engagement with video they experiment with the construction of situations. They create environments. Their work juxtaposes the documentary idiom with fictitious interventions while interjecting areas of violence, aggression, submission and blind ideological obedience.

Ruti Sela and Maayan Amir have shown their works internationally including the Sydney Biennale (2006), the Istanbul Biennial (2009), the Berlin Biennial and Manifesta 8 (2010). In 2009 Amir and Sela developed the ‘Exteriority Project’. They received the UNESCO young artist award (2009).