AMERIKA (Thesis Exhibition) at the New Wight Gallery, University of California, Los Angeles. 2024
‍Amerika focuses on the relationship between the cinematic genre of Film Noir and many of its filmmakers’ biographies — Jewish immigrants who escaped Europe during the 30s, following the Nazi party’s rise to power. Through this relationship, the transition from the surreal-nightmarish sphere of German Expressionism to the realist-corrupt Noir environment, is examined as an expression of their living experiences. Two distinct movements observed in Noir films mirror those in the filmmakers’ biographies: that of displacement, which uproots the protagonist from their familiar surroundings; and that of the protagonist himself, a constant movement of escape and concealment.

The installation leads the viewer into a house comprising three sections -an entrance hall, a staircase and a bedroom. While the furniture’s façades are kept intact, their interiors displace the domestic space into a Noir-ish environment, following the nature of the cinematic image -flat, framed and repetitive- and the techniques of the movie set- manipulative use of lighting, proportions and segmentation. Similar to the Noir film, where the movement from one scene to another fosters a sense of displacement, Amerika infiltrates objects, cutting holes and deconstructing them, as a way of initiating the transformation from one structure to another.