PAST EXHIBITION
N O K – Next Of Kin
Inbal Abergil
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PAST EXHIBITION
N O K – Next Of Kin
Inbal Abergil
Baxter St is pleased to present a solo exhibition by artist and 2015 Workspace Resident Inbal Abergil. In her exhibition N O K – Next Of Kin, Abergil examines the ways in which American families memorialize their relatives killed in military conflict. Abergil traveled throughout the U.S. to meet with relatives of fallen soldiers and military personnel and to document their methods of coping with loss through the preservation of personal effects. Her ongoing interest in the representation of war has led her to look beyond the phenomenon of large public monuments and to focus instead on the personal altars and private displays of mementos maintained by families. Small, private monuments exist in garages, basements, attics and storage lockers across the United States. Families must decide which objects to keep, what to take with them or let go of when they move or as time passes. Through images and testimonials, Abergil’s project honors the dead while at the same time giving voice to a community of survivors who keep memory alive as they strive to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of loss.
In conjunction with the exhibition, a new publication with interviews between the families and the artist will be available at the gallery.
Abergil participated in a panel discussion about Next of Kin at BAXTER ST at CCNY on Saturday, March 5th, at 3 pm, moderated by photographer Allen Frame, with Elisabeth Sherman, curator at the Whitney Museum, and poet and playwright Maurice Emerson Decaul. The event was free and open to the public but space is limited.
Inbal Abergil is a visual artist and educator, originally from Jerusalem. Her practice investigates the aesthetic and societal norms through conceptions of time, memory and place, specifically in cultures where loss is a substantial part of daily life. Her work addresses the lived experience of conflict and trauma. Abergil holds an M.F.A. in Visual Art from Columbia University (2011). She studied photography at Jerusalem’s Hadassah College (2001), and received a BFA with honors from the Midrasha School of Art (2007). She has had recent exhibitions at Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast; Jeonju Photo Festival, South Korea; Shulamit Gallery, Venice, California and Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery, New York City, among others. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Rabenovich Prize from Tel Aviv’s Department of Art & Culture (2004), The America-Israel Cultural Foundation (2002) and the Artist Grant Program (2012). Her series Nothing Left Here But The Hurt was nominated for the prestigious Prix Pictet Photography Prize (2012). Abergil was selected as a 2013 FlaxArt International Artist in Residence, Northern Ireland. In 2015, Abergil’s recent project was selected for fiscal sponsorship with Artspire, a program of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA).
PRESS
In her exhibition N O K – Next Of Kin, Abergil examines the ways in which American families memorialize their relatives killed in military conflict. Abergil traveled throughout the U.S. to meet with relatives of fallen soldiers and military personnel and to document their methods of coping with loss through the preservation of personal effects. Her ongoing interest in the representation of war has led her to look beyond the phenomenon of large public monuments and to focus instead on the personal altars and private displays of mementos maintained by families. Small, private monuments exist in garages, basements, attics and storage lockers across the United States. Musée Art Out.
The objects in Inbal Abergil’s photographs can be seen as the inverse of the kind of massive monuments that fillparks and publicly memorialize those killed in war. Her subjects are personal mementos, made from ephemeral materials like cloth and paper rather than bronze and stone—a scrap of newspaper, a stuffed animal, a stack of cards and photographs. But the modest size of these objects belies their evocative power for those who treasure them, and by extension for us. PDN Photo Of The Day.