Artemis Alcalay

For some, the home is a refuge, that shell that protects the inside from the outside. We can imagine that in times of peace, roots will develop and we will settle for a while. The pulse has attained a predictable hum. But with turmoil it begins… Many will be forced to leave, while others will be left. For Artemis the home seems to be that restless canvas onto which identity meets history, then strives to move on, venturing out into the unfamiliar. Fashioned in her studio, her homes juxtapose a myriad of media and techniques, many of those one would find in actual dwellings: weaving, carpentry, painting, and plaster. Self-reflection mingles with imagination in these hybrid artworks, which no sooner completed, become nomadic. Packed in the car trunk, unloaded by the roadside, they appear on rooftops at sunset, or in garages at dusk. She carries them up village hills, on her back through the thistles, over her head through the sea… She parades them deep into the inner city, where they pose with passers-by: children, couples, street people, both the carefree and the dispossessed. Each space and each person reinvests these homes with a personal narrative. By photographing them in reconstructed settings Artemis enriches their expression, her camera acting not as an objective witness, but as a facilitator for dialogue and communication. She uses photography like many before her to record the events of life. But unlike the snapshots of a tourist in an album, her pictures are simulated performances, playful, inquisitive, interconnected. Eventually, they too will become history: a history recreated by myth, but frozen in time, and stored like a true memory.

Laura Dodson