photographer / artist

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Untitled (Nancy, Special Edition), Paris 2009 (100/150 cm)

Untitled (Nancy, Special Edition), is a photograph of a coca cola can on which the image of the lebanese superstar singer nancy is printed. the singer, who is a goodwill ambassador for unicef, has also starred as the official face of the soft drink giant during a marketing campaign in the arab world.

OULULU (tell him), solo exhibition by the acclaimed israeli photographer David Adika. a large part of Adika’s work focuses on the visual and cultural components of the Israeli domestic space as a microcosm that represents and re"ects upon social and familial identities. his images blur the boundaries between an abstract conceptual visual language and a lush visual accuracy. or many years, the artist has used this vocabulary to examine the tension within the Israeli society, between the two main ethnic groups, the ashkenazi jews (descents of the European communities of the jewish diaspora) and the sephardic jews (descents of the arab and north african communities of the jewish diaspora).
there is a long-standing conflict between these two groups, dating from the beginning of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century, which is still at play in the political, cultural and economical arenas of the diverse and volatile current israeli society. each ethnic group holds on to its own cultural and aesthetic values, as part of its differentiation process from the other. david adika’s point of view - that of the observer, never the judge - transcends beyond the taken images and offers a complex set of
meaningful nuances. in this new body of works, the artist is taking his profound language and, as if zooming out, applying it into a larger canvas, where he is pointing us towards a complex set of differences and resemblances between the Israeli jew and the israeli arab, as well as between the former and his neighboring arab countries. indeed, the artist is still the observer, but now the one who looks outside.
many of the images were collected during the artist’s regular wandering of the streets of Jewish and Arab cities and villages in israel. some are of people and objects he met or picked up along the way, within israel and beyond it, in the surrounding middle east. long stays in different european cities have provided Adika with an opportunity to meet some of his neighbours/’enemies’ on neutral grounds. in arabic, the name of the exhibition, 'oululu', means 'tell him'. it is a name of a song by the classic Arab singer abdel halim hafez. David Adika has childhood memories in which his grandmother sang this song. as part of an earlier Zionist dogma, new Jewish immigrants in Palestine, and then in israel, were discouraged from speaking their original mother tongues.
within the story of the israeli-arab conflict, the usage of Arabic was even more contentious. hence, the title might suggest a secret world. the ambiguity of meaning is enhanced by the fact that this love song is sung by one man to another. the exhibition comprises some twenty photographs and two prints, which are displayed in the
different rooms of the gallery as a complex installation by the artist. the images vary in sizes and are either standalone or grouped, on brightly painted walls.

[ Adi Gura, Curator ]