Noa Lidor: This Dark Ceiling Without a Star

About

The exhibition comprises a series of in-situ installations, sculpture and drawings that juxtapose the cosmic and the domestic, reflecting ordered systems of communication and the process of instilling meaning. In her practice Lidor often uses objects from the everyday such as bells and recorders, whose intended uses she disrupts to create new narratives. She uses these objects as ready-mades, interested in the formal and symbolic qualities they are imbued with. Embedded in a surface or glued together, the objects are forced into stillness, with recorders and bells rendered soundless. Removed from their vernacular context, and reorganized into spatial drawings, the objects assume new roles and new codes, that the viewer is invited to decipher. Endless Column, an allusion to Brancusi's eminent sculpture, forms an abstract architectural structure. It refers to the concept of the axis mundi (a cosmic axis) looking at symbolic passages between heaven and earth. Lidor's version takes another cultural dimension; the piece is made of five identical pairs of nickel-plated candlesticks, alluding to a commandment addressed to married women in Judaism, the ritual of lighting a pair of candles every Friday to inaugurate Sabbath. Connections between heaven and earth are also present in Lidor's two other pieces. Field (Andromeda) consists of brass bells of various sizes embedded in a double size mattress. The bells, through their arrangement, form the star constellation of Andromeda, which is named after the eponymous princess in Greek mythology. Field (Perseus) represents another celestial constellation, set in the gallery's backyard. The work is composed of a series of wooden recorders implanted into a cement ground. The piece can be viewed from a window in the gallery space above, mapping the Perseus star constellation. In Greek legend, Perseus was the hero who saved Andromeda from death - rescuing her from the rock she was chained to, about to be sacrificed to a sea monster. He later became her husband. This dark ceiling without a star is the closing line of the poem Child by Sylvia Plath. Recent works by Noa Lidor include The Mammals at Tate Modern, an installation commissioned by the Tate for their Members Room (2008). She is currently working on a new commission to be shown as part of Drawn From Life at Abbot Hall Art Gallery, UK (2011). Lidor received her BFA at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem in 2001 and her MFA at the Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2004. She lives and works in London.