Existing comment:
Indexical Art (1996-2006)
In 1977, art critic Rosalind Krauss wrote Notes on the Index: Seventies Art in America. In it, she posits that the stylistically and formally diverse art produced in the 1970s shares a particular relationship to representation that she refers to as indexical. Much like the index in a book, indexical art points at something that is not represented by the index itself, but exists or is depicted elsewhere. Krauss's notion of the index was arguably realized in Israel most fully in the 1990s. The indexical nature of Israeli art from this decade issues from the material conditions of Israeli life.
Indexical local art offers a means of indirectly representing both missing events and the process by which those events were removed from view. The index not only indicates something beyond symbolism but symbolizes its active erasure. Unlike the "traditional" index, it not only points to something that is not signified here, but towards the very process that removed it from the visible frame. It reveals that an acknowledgment of a Palestinian presence is beyond the limits of the symbolic apparatus. |