WM: I understand that you where born in South Africa, and then moved to Israel when you where 13. Where do you feel you belong?
A: I don’t really feel I belong in any place. Surely I feel closer to Israel then to South Africa, even though I lived there for many years. I grew up in a very Zionist family and I would say that I don’t even really remember what it means or what it felt like in “real” South Africa. I am kind of my own home.
WM: What do you mean by “real”?
A: That I was surrounded by certain forms and people, with very precise ideas of why they are there, and to where they really belong. I studied in a Habad Jewish school and was surrounded by my community. I remember Lewis and Maria. I would play football with Lewis, and I guess Maria was kind of a second mother to me. My parents had a little bell above their bed and every morning they would ring the bell and Maria would come in with a cup of coffee for the Madam, and a glass of hot water and sugar for the Sir. It seemed so natural. I would like to make a work about this.
WM: Why did your parents decide to move to Israel?
A: My parents where born in Israel and that was always seen as home. One always wants to go back home. It was only a question of when. My elder brother decided to make Aliya (Immigrate) and join the Israeli army. After a short time my mother wanted to be close to him and we all decided to go home. I remember I had a flag of Golani, (my brothers army brigade) on the wall above my bed. It happened to be that this was the same year the apartheid was over. After some years I joined the same army brigade.
WM: Is Aliya the same as immigration?
A: That’s an interesting issue. Literally Alia means to go up. If you leave Israel then you are called a “Yored”, literally meaning someone that goes down. You go up to Israel, and you go down to the rest of the world. This is fixed very strongly in our minds. It was for me immigration in a sense that everything had changed. Surely the language, but more it was a feeling that every part of you is transferring through this process both physically and mentally. After some years I would finish my Yeshiva high school and move for 2 years to Gush Katif (what is now part of Gaza). After these 2 years I joined the army finishing after 4 years.
WM: Is that the time when your work “ I was a soldier” was made?
Ariel Reichman, Untitled 2008. 1m x 1.12m pigment print on paper
A: Physically that’s the time it was made. It takes place in the Mukata in Ramalla during the exile of Arafat. Consciously the work was made 2 years ago. I was in Art University, and I was telling a friend some story from the army and he wouldn’t believe that I served as a fighter soldier (as I am quit petite and in an art school). The next week I brought him photos from my family album proving to him that it was true, but at the same time I suddenly looked at myself in these pictures and couldn’t really recognize that it was I. I felt as though it was somebody else and this someone scared me. I find family albums fascinating.
WM: When did this change in you mind happen?
A: I’m not really sure the exact time. I think it was a long process. I guess travelling also had a lot to do with this, as it was the first time for me to really confront other people with other believes and cultures.
WM: Is the idea that you are in the photo important to you?
A: It is. It is a fundamental idea that I don’t look at the other and ask questions or make remarks. I look at my own personal surrounding and myself. This is a very important point I want to make. I try not to produce - Susan Sontag says it very nicely…”Professional Tourism”. I also believe in an obvious idea that there is no distinction between the personal and the political. The intimate and the public. All have become one. I search for the essence of the thing itself. I believe ultimately the intimate will explain in a deeper understanding the political. I search for the subjective presence in my reality.
WM: Is that where the portraits of the women come into your work?
A: Not in a pre decided way. I have a strong passion to understanding my space and place, and to the idea that people are dying for nothing but we don’t realize it. I have a very strong passion to intimacy. I guess I want to feel and share this intimacy and this moment of something real in a very unreal world. I also try to work from the inside. I feel especially that in so called political art, one sees a very distant and “conceptual” approach, But I would like to bring the viewer closer to me physically, and then allow him to think and understand the world I am creating. The first physical sensitivity is very important to me.
WM: Is this unreal world what you would like to show in the works "July 2006"
A: July 2006, started as a work during the 2nd Israeli-Lebanon war in the summer of 2006 and was finished as a work this year. The news channel 10 made a special evening program where they would go up to the northern border and interview soldiers coming out of the battlefield. One of the interviewers is Tali Moreno, and I was always amazed at here presence in this space. She was wearing a red dress and the way she looked and spoke to the soldiers was for me unbelievable. I found these intimate moments in this obscene environment. Surely also I look at Tali Moreno not only as a subjective person but rather more as the 3rd arm of the media. If you look at this theatre that was built for us by the media and the roles that are played by the different people involved. I was drawn to it, but furious at the same time. I was also working on the images here in Berlin, and I feel this distance (especially emotionally) from Israel made it possible for me to be precise in the work.
WM: How do you feel in Berlin after 2 years?
A: More love then hate.
Ariel Reichman, July 2006 Untitled 1: 1m x 1.5m pigment print on paper 2007
Ariel Reichman, July 2006 Untitled 2: 1m x 1.5m pigment print on paper 2007
whitehot gallery images, click a thumbnail.
Ariel Reichman Lives and works in Berlin/Jerusalem. He was born in 1979.
arelart@yahoo.com
