ESTHER SHALEV-GERZ
Based in Paris, Esther Shalev-Gerz is internationally recognised for her artistic practice that investigates the construction of knowledge, histories, and cultural identities through the potentialities of unexpurgated expression. Research-based, her poetic approach challenges the notion and practice of portraiture and considers how its qualities may contribute to contemporary discourse about the politics of representation.
Her installations, photography, video, sound and public sculpture are developed through active dialogue, consultation and negotiation with people whose participation gives context to their individual and collective memories, accounts, opinions and experiences which then become both represented and considered.
Constantly inquiring into transitional qualities of time and space and correlative transformations of identities, locales and (hi)stories, Esther Shalev-Gerz has produced a body of work that simultaneously records, critiques, and contributes to our understandings of the societal roles and value of artistic practice. Her bibliography contains more than twenty monographs and her artworks can be found in numerous public and private collections.