Aya Ben Ron

Artist Statement

In an age when people are enchanted by the prospect of healing, Aya Ben Ron exposes the intricacies of caregiving, and receiving care. Her works examine social perceptions and visual representations of the ‘ill’ and of ‘illness’ in a cultural and historical context. Through the observation of physical and mental traumatic situations, her works contemplate the human motivation, as well as her own personal passion – to rescue, repair and recover. Ben Ron questions scientific conventions, psychological theories, and spiritual philosophies, and chooses to focus on the essence of medical ethics, and above all, the power relations between the strong and the weak. However, her works also present the necessity of submitting to a caregiver, and the inherent belief in the ability to recover. Using various aesthetic tactics, she reexamines concepts of beauty and perfection in order to uncover the prospect of healing, in both the public and personal sense.

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Biography

Aya Ben Ron (b. 1967, Israel) is the founder and director of Field Hospital X. She is a multidisciplinary artist, received an MFA from Goldsmiths College, London (1999). She is a professor at the School of the Arts at Haifa University and at the Photographic-Communication Department at Hadassah Academic College, Jerusalem, Israel. Her work ranges from site specific projects and installations to moving-image, documentary and film, and includes collaborations with medical institutions and hospitals in Israel and around the world. She was awarded the Creativity Encouragement Prize, The Ministry of Education and Culture (2016), the Dizengoff Prize (2011), and the Isracard and Tel Aviv Museum of Art Prize for an Israeli Artist (2009). Recent screenings, solo exhibitions and site specific works include: Busan Bienalle, Korea (2016); The Last Voyage To Cythera, Front (online since 2015); All Is Well, Máxima Medisch Centrum/Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2013); A Voyage To Cythera, Berlin Museum of Medical History (2012); First Aid Station, Aando Fine Art, Berlin (2012); Rescue, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2012); Shift, Aando Fine Art, Berlin (2010). Group exhibitions include: Tracing the Edge of Consciousness, The Wellcome Trust Gallery, London (2016); Out of Body, The Israel Museum (2013); Blackout, Exhibition Research Centre, Liverpool (Look/2013); It Doesn’t Always Have To Be Beautiful Unless It Is Beautiful, Kosovo Art Gallery (2012); Siyah/White, CDA-Projects, Istanbul (2012); Another World is Possible, Yaffo 23, Jerusalem (2011); Black and White, MOMA in Warsaw (2011); Die Untoten: Life Sciences & Pulp Fiction, Kampnagel, Hamburg (2011) Life: A User’s Manual, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2011); Darkside II: Photographic Power and Violence, Disease, and Death Photographed, Fotomuseum Winterthur (2009), among others.

Aya Ben Ron represented Israel at the 58th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, 2019, with Field Hospital X. Curator: Avi Lubin, Producer: Miki Gov.

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