Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Black Box: Nira Pereg
August 22, 2011 – December 4, 2011
The Black Box theater showcases rotating exhibitions of contemporary artists who use film or video as their creative medium. Films or videos run continuously.
Nira Pereg (Israeli, b. Tel Aviv, 1969) creates documentary-based multimedia projects that transform reality into quasi-theatrical events. This presentation features 67 Bows (2006), a work inspired by a visit to the Karlsruhe Zoo in Germany, where Pereg studied a flock of flamingos. She realized that whenever she lifted her arms, by reflex the flamingos reacted, calling to mind the response of a symphony orchestra to the conductor’s baton. Employing various camera angles, the artist offers sumptuous close-ups of these exotic animals calmly going about their instinctual business. Over the muffled noise of the birds’ squawks and clucks, she adds a provocative, sporadically timed soundtrack, evoking a sense of suspense and heightened apprehension among viewers, who must question the relationship between what they see and what they hear.
