Shai Zakai, Forest Tunes | The Library
Exhibition & Catalogue

Shai Zakai, eco-artist, photographer, founder and director of the Israeli Forum for Ecological Art

Touring Exhibition opportunity in UK

The tour is coordinated in partnership with the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (CCANW). Parts of the exhibition have shown in Israel, Korea, United States, and Japan. See http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/17614/ for information regarding its latest US showing.

It will be shown at CCANW from 10 October – 22 November 09 and Shai will be lecturing in Falmouth, Plymouth and Totnes.  It is supported by BI ARTS, the British-Israeli Arts training scheme.

From end of November 2009, the project is available as a temporary or permanent installation in the UK. It will be adapted for each venue by the artist and/or co-designer, Eran Spitzer. Shai is also available for lectures and public workshops.

Artist’s statement and exhibition description (abstract)
After a thirteen year journey to record some of the imprint of humankind on the environment with leaves, stories, and photographs, the project is drawing to a close.  It has created 170 up-cycled boxes, containing organic material from nineteen countries.

The project is a visual, yet restrained, warning.  It is a place to contemplate on human nature, while using most of our senses – touch, smell, sight, and sound – simultaneously. The multi-media installation is an observatory and a collection of mostly damaged nature, highlighting the daily effects of global warming set in motion by human beings, i.e., the loss of biodiversity, deforestation, human indifference.

In the exhibition, visitors are invited to leaf through boxes from Japan; Australia; Cyprus; Kirgizstan; India; Israel among others; to read the texts inside each box; and to ponder on the species that we are destroying unthinkingly.  If this irresponsible behavior toward our environment continues, it will be possible to visit the leaf library and be reminded how nature used to look.
About the artist
Shai Zakai, a photographer and ecological artist, is author of the book Faces and Facet (Portrait of a Woman) and the project Concrete Creek 1999-2002 – in which reclamation of a stream functions as an artistic creation.  She is the director/ founder of the Israeli Forum for Ecological Art, and holds an MA in Art and Environmental Policy.  She has shown in more than sixty exhibitions in museums and galleries in Israel and throughout the world.  Her works are to be found in both private and museum collections.  She has represented Israel in art and environment exhibitions and symposia in Africa, Japan, Italy, China, Korea and the United States.  She is a guest lecturer and curator as well as a consultant for ecological public projects, and organizations for the development of creative environmental leadership.

All enquiries about the exhibition:
Clive Adams, Director
CCANW
Haldon Forest Park
Exeter EX6 7XR
01392 832277
adams@ccanw.co.uk

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