Haim Maor

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I am interested in learning about Thai traditional culture such as techniques, media, and subject matter. I would like to create a collaboration project (possibly site specific) in which I will work together with local artists, my partner, and possibly other artists in the residency. I will decide the technique for my artwork after seeing the local surroundings. Possible techniques could be drawing, painting, photography, video art or installation.

My main artistic body of work deals with my identity as a man, an artist, an Israeli secular Jew, a son of Holocaust survivors from Poland, and as a husband, father, and grandfather. The reflections of the elements of my identity confront other identities from other countries, cultures and religions, creating a dialogue between them. 

My art work examines the differences between private and family memory, and between collective and national memory, as can be seen in my installations “Faces of Race and Memory” (1988), “The Forbidden Library” (1994), “They are Me” (2011) or “Memo” (2016).

The Faces of Race and Memory, 1988, 2009. cycle of photographs. Photo: Małgorzata Kujda (sorce: http://votkenyoumach.de/artist/haim-maor/)

In my work, I search for “low tech” techniques in order to create paintings that appear as naive and folk art, such as certain icons, tapestries and embroideries, masks, and tombstones. For each of these elements there is a presence of memory, ritual, and commemoration, as can be seen in my project “Spiritual Sapanta” (2007-2013).

Professor Haim Maor is an active artist, researcher and curator of Israeli art. He was born in 1951 in Jaffa, Israel. In 1973-1976, he studied art at Hamidrasha Seminar for Teachers of Art and Painting, Ramat Hasharon. Since 1975 Maor’s artwork has been exhibited in Israel and all over the world. Prof. Haim Maor is one of the founders of The Department of the Arts at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev since 1996. From 2006 he is a Tenured Professor in the Department. In addition, he is the Art-Advisor of the University’s President; the Director and Curator of the University’s Art Galleries and the head of the Fine-Art Studio Division. He lectures on Israeli Art, Contemporary Art and Art Curatorship.

Prof. Maor was the first editor and co-founder of Studio, an Israeli Art magazine (Chief editor 1989-1993). As an artist, Maor received numerous awards, including: The Minister of Science and Culture Award (1994); The Zussman Award, Yad Va’shem, Jerusalem (1995); The Council of Culture Award, Mif”al Hapais (The National Lottery) (2004); The Minister of Culture and Sport Award (2010).

http://www.maorart.com/