Premio Combat Prize

Na’amah, a video work by Hilla Ben Ari, combines a number of choreographic scenes into a complex narrative opus.
Na’amah is based on the play Tubal Cain written by Nahum Benari, her grandfather’s brother, who was an author and intellectual and one of the founders of Kibbutz Ein Harod and of the Museum of Art Ein Harod. The play is an interpretation of the biblical story of Tubal-Cain, the “father of metalsmiths”, through which the author confronts issues of community, creative powers, hubris, sin, guilt and punishment. One of the characters in the play is Tubal-Cain’s sister, Naamah, a mute gleaner. Hilla Ben Ari makes the character of Naamah a central key to her work’s meaning, and seeks to read the play through a gender prism and to expand the critical perspectives implicit in it.
The scenes that she builds are composed of sequences of charged physical states – of groups and of individuals – that range between strength, weakness and collapse. These scenes were filmed in daytime and nighttime on the hill above the Museum of Art Ein Harod, on two basically functional stages. They are devoid of myth and of reference to any specific historical moment. Through them she conducts a dialogue with the structure of the stage from the early days of Ein Harod, with kibbutz ceremonies and also with the Greek theater. As in all her works, the relations between body and the skeleton of the construction carry in-depth meanings, and the trembling of the strained body echoes the component of personal time and space that is threatened by regimentation.
The work was presented at Museum of Art Ein Harod (2015) and at Galleria Marie-Laure Fleisch, Rome (2015).
Hilla Ben Ari (1972) lives and works in Tel Aviv. In her work she combines various mediums such as video, installation, sculpture and paper cuts. The female body as a crossroads of political, social and cultural contexts is at the core of her work.
Ben Ari exhibited her video works in galleries and Museums such as: Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, MACRO - Museum of Contemporary Art Rome, Maxxi Museum, Rome; Haifa Museum of Art; Petach Tikva Museum of Art; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest and so forth.
Her video works took part in international festivals including: Videonale 12 at Bonn Museum of Art, Loop Fair - Barcelona, Optica Festival Madrid/ Paris, The 18th Japan Media Arts Festival, Tokyo and more.
Among her prizes: Kolb Prize – Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2014), Prize to Encourage Creativity from the Israeli Ministry of Culture (2012) Optica International Festival of Video Art Award (2008).
Ben Ari graduated from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem (1999) and has a Master’s Degree in Comparative Literature from the Tel Aviv University (2006).