The series "Your KLI is Wonderful!" includes 8 drawings of charcoal on paper, that merge my features with those of various public figures, thus creating self-portraits that are at the same time also portraits of fashion models, artists, porn stars, cultural icons and politicians.
The drawings were made specifically for an online media work – an internet site by the same name (http://www.yourkli.com).
The idea for the project came from a part-time job I had at an Israeli-run art information site, which aims to cater to small and medium range collectors. My job was to collect information from the web, and I was working with a program that they developed, which was called "KLI". When I came in for training, they wanted to explain why they chose this name. As it turned out, the reason was that they had offices in NYC, and they wanted the 'girls' there, as they referred to them, to call in with comments such as: "The klee is wonderful!", "The klee is working again", etc.
Now would be a good time to mention that in Hebrew the word klee means tool, and is also used as a euphemism for the male organ. In other words, the name was selected for its phallic connotations, and because they found the idea of the 'girls' uninformed use of it, extremely amusing.
Naturally I felt that I couldn`t pass on this golden opportunity, and I decided to try and create my own joke, inspired by the pranksters.
The result was an internet site which is built as a parody of art information web sites. 'Your KLI is Wonderful!' has all of the parts you would normally find on such a site, however each part has undergone a parodic shift.
The drawings that were created for the site were based mostly on images found on the web, and they correlate to one of the main themes of art information sites – the possibility of collecting and of being collected.
They explore the relationship between desire and collecting, by examining the types of people that we might desire, and by examining the types of things that we tend to collect – images of desire, images of art, images taken from popular culture, etc, and by relating to the ways by which all these things go predominantly through the filters of computer screens today.
I am an American-Israeli artist, and I work mostly in drawing and painting. My work explores the various ways by which drawing and painting can be used as performative tools, which allow for different transformations to take place and scratch at the surface of reality, in an attempt to claim it as their own. In this series the use of traditional drawing allowed my image to materialize as diverse genders, and my works also explore transformations of objects, of landscapes, of libido and of the self.
-
font size
decrease font size
increase font size
Itsy Bitsy (Men of Israel)
Doria Sharra
Image Gallery
View the embedded image gallery online at:
https://itch.co.za/component/k2/item/1100-your-kli-is-wonderful?highlight=WyJkb3JpYSIsInNoYXJyYSIsImRvcmlhIHNoYXJyYSJd#sigProIdff9c4db001
https://itch.co.za/component/k2/item/1100-your-kli-is-wonderful?highlight=WyJkb3JpYSIsInNoYXJyYSIsImRvcmlhIHNoYXJyYSJd#sigProIdff9c4db001
Tagged under
