Xxijra Hii Gallery, 2024

Horny, Aimless & Alone


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Horny, Aimless & Alone presents a fictitious environment-animal pairing between a mutated phallic creature, part military-grade hunter-killer drone, part beluga whale, and an acidic, monoculture forest, commenting on colonial methodologies of displacement via ecological manipulation and the weaponising of nature.

Serfaty confronts and subverts the masculinised imagery of warfare throughout an imagined world. Exploring the intersection of sexuality and destruction, Serfaty deconstructs phallic symbolism inherent in weaponry design, the vulnerability and precarity of land as a manifestation of complex social structures.

An exploration of soft power where boundaries between nature and authority blur, challenging our perceptions of what is 'natural' and how we wield it as a tool for dominance. Survival of the fittest? Perhaps not, our lonely protagonist now wanders wearily throughout a promising environment lacking in lovers; soon to expire.

Hunter, Killer, Father, Lover becomes ensnared by the objects around him, performing compulsive rituals with incompatible entities. His slow, sagging skin barely holds together as he avoids rupture on the very architecture built to keep him in power. A tower, a missile, a shaft… once a hunter-killer drone, piercing and penetrating conquests with pure virility. Feeling aroused? These powers are failing. He’s the main character and he’s a flop.

Transformed from stiff weapon to undulating translucent flesh, a sense of pity ensues. Loneliness and sexual prowess becomes an embarrassing feature; abandoned and awkward. Once virile, he is now rejected. Mother Nature watches on, with a high degree of ‘cringe’. Counterintuitively, he falls for her, swooping and hoping once again for her to let him in; alas this time it won’t happen. She has been made monoculture and acid and using it against him. She has nothing left to give.

A poignant portrayal of the inherent tension between agency and constraint, you can hear him a mile-off wailing in the distance. Hardly the dexterous and stealthy assassin he once was. “When will he leave?” Mother asks. Her patience running thin, she will re-cultivate as an act of rebellion. With the ability to continually renew; she challenges preconceived notions of power and authority, of ownership. She won’t take it lying down! Until, the next epoch of technology, war and giant phalli take to the sky again that is - she’ll have to think of something different.

Two entities locked in a symbiotic yet adversarial relationship; compelled to confront the unsettling reality of unchecked power and the fragile balance between dominion and submission. Of military hardware and nurturing familial picnic furnishings, of harsh sound and crunchy leaves.


— Ema O’Donovan, Founding Gallerist & Curator at Xxijra Hii



Steady States, 2021


an interactive environment depicting the Israeli Dead Sea, surrounding desert, and their contested water politics.

The work is comprised of a map with 3 starting points, which I refer to as Guided Tours, and include Inward, Rift and Above. Each Tour criticises a different political element of the landscape.

Viewers are invited to select whichever starting point they wish. Once in the Tour, they are free to traverse the map, and will be guided by a voiceover at set times.





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Supported by Sarabande Foundation
Emerging Artist Award

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Supported by Arad
Contemporary Art Center

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Full 45-minute recording of
an interaction is available
upon request


🧨  
Radio recordings courtesy of the 
Israeli Defence Forces Archives

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Game development by
Lucas Bastian




Steady States at The Autonomous Art Biennale,
Curated by Dr. Roy Brand, Sandra Weil and Rula Khoury, 2023

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Solo show at Arad Contemporary Art Centre,
Curated by Leah Abir, 2021

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Slade School of Fine Art
MFA Fine Art Media Degree Show, 2021

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Seam, Strata, Seance

Group show with Tavga Guttstadt and Sherie Sitauze, organised by Alia Hamaoui, Maia Magoga and Ted Le Swer at Collective Ending, 2021

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This is a 360° Video  🌐  Drag to look around  👆  Please use headphones  🎧  







Deserted Landscape, 2020
Installation view
An Ode to Ein Akev, 2020
Full HD CGI
00:01:22 loop
An Ode to Ein Akev, 2020
Installation view
Full HD CGI
00:01:22 loop

It’s Electric #1, 2020
275x62cm
Ceramic, steel, concrete



Deserted Landscape, 2020
Installation view


Nitzana and the Border, 2019
124x170cm
Framed photographic print




Deserted Landscape, 2020
Installation view


The Flood, 2020
96x62cm
Framed photographic print, cow’s pelvis

Politics of a Landscape;
A personal ontology of southern Israel’s desert territory, 2020


Deserted Landscape explores the ecological, national and indigenous entangling of the Israeli Negev desert. Stemming from lived experience and academic research alike, the installation holds found and made, digital and physical objects and sounds, a 13-minute film and two framed photographs. Deserted Landscape suggests a transformation of the Negev from a passive, desolate wilderness, into an active political agent. The project was developed with the support of the Arad Contemporary Art Center Artist in Residence programme and premiered at London Short Film Festival 2021.



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