The Israel Museum presents "Wall Work III: Aya Ben Ron: RESCUE"
Consisting of a suspended sculpture and a video work, Rescue represents an additional stratum in Aya Ben Ron's ongoing artistic investigation of the modern apparatus of medical care and rescue. Ben Ron's steel sculpture hangs in mid-air, between life and death, as in a rescue operation or, alternately, as in depictions of heavenly ascension. Steel lines trace the schematic contour of a nurse strapped onto a stretcher. Does the sculpture represent the rescue of a person, or is it an object transported for exhibition purposes? The video appears to take us back in time, presenting a scenario that may serve to clarify the situation. Shot in the artist's studio, the video features the Head of Patient Safety at Hadassah Hospital and the director of Israel's emergency medical services' training department "rescuing" the artist, who is dressed as a nurse. She surrenders herself to their skillful care and, tightly strapped to the stretcher, becomes helpless and immobile, as though she were an object. The static, frontal figure of the suspended nurse suggests a religious icon, while her bound body is reminiscent of a mummy or an anthropoid sarcophagus, such as those greeting visitors to the Archaeology Wing. Like a saint confined between strips of lead in a Gothic stained-glass window, the nurse is imprisoned within steel contours. The nurse's uniform insignia and the formalized gestures of the actors emphasize the ritual aspects of medical rescue procedures - particularly in light of the fact that there is no actual need for rescue. Ben Ron's work underscores the tensions and contradictions inherent in medical procedures and in patient-caregiver relationships, reenacting relations of dependence in which care and healing are juxtaposed with invasive intervention, domination, and objectification. The work's ritualistic elements and the allusion to sacred icons and heavenly ascension draw our attention to the complex relationship between physical rescue and spiritual salvation.
The exhibition is curated by Aya Miron, Associate Curator, David Orgler Department of Israeli Art
Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday 10:00 to 17:00; Tuesday 16:00 to 21:00; Friday 10:00 to 14:00
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