Priests Warning, 2019, was a site-specific work exhibited at 'Hamekarer 3' show in the airless spaces of Tel-Aviv's old wholesale market refrigerator.

Masking tape, wood, epoxy, metal, carton, sound, LED lights.

A priest's warning is a sign put up in hospitals in Israel that when is lit, declares there is a dead body in the room and a cohen (priest) should not enter. In the Jewish tradition, a Cohen should not be impurified with death in case of the rebuilding of the third temple. 

The installation was viewed from the entrance. 

Priests Warning

'The Bell Has Rung But the Queen is Underwater', 2019, is a large-scale installation exhibited at Artists' Studios Tel-Aviv. 

It's composed of a large object (concrete iceberg) floating in the space, divided by a two-way mirror foil that is not only dividing the object but the whole space, several objects behind the foil, a sound piece and lights changing randomly between the spaces (in front-behind the mirror).

Exhibition text by Hagar Brill:

‘The Bell Has Rung But the Queen is Underwater’ is a performative installation which deals with the mechanism of repression and escapism of the human soul. In the space of the Tel Aviv Artists House, Elinor Sahm builds a jagged iceberg, blocking and disrupting the viewers' way around the room. There, behind a two-way mirror, stands the artist herself, creating a multitude of events through various objects, lighting, and sound.

Sahm’s exhibition continues her focused work on empathy and human relationships, especially those that can be built through the art, between herself and the audience watching her works. Many of Sahm’s works are built as installations and are created as space- dependent environments that completely contain and assimilate the viewer’s body.
In her current exhibition, viewers that inter the space encounter a massive concrete construction, with arms that resemble huge ice growlers directed at their bodies. At the entrance, they are confronted with the choice: to pass the iceberg from left or right? To go under it? Or above it? Maybe they are not supposed to go in at all?

As with her past works, Sahm’s cement iceberg is a spectacle of deception, as it is not made from cement at all. Sahm works with materials that imitate other materials, to capture her audience’s curiosity and offer them a materialistic environment that stimulates the senses and arouses the mind. The piece of cement hanging by a thread at the entrance seems threatening but is actually hollow and light. This deceptive materialism characterizes Sahm’s works and is revealed in all aspects of the exhibition which tries to deal with the tension between indifference and involvement, consideration and denial - and the short, deceiving distance between those ends.

The two-way mirror standing behind the glacier acts as a metaphor for human defense against various events in the world. Through an elaborate set of lighting effects, the back of the exhibition, which is behind the mirror, is alternately revealed and concealed to the viewers. There, along with various objects and using original sounds, Sahm herself stands in a kind of performative - collaborative action with her viewers: through the world she built behind the mirror, she is looking at us, creating eye contact, allowing us to look back and take part in her physical presence in the space and react to it. 
From this real-time, real-life relationship, Sahm seeks to reflect on the mental actions we take to protect ourselves from the horrendous reality that surrounds us: environmental disasters, humanitarian crises, war-torn areas and personal troubles that interfere with our daily life. These are all events that are supposedly far from us, at the bottom of the glacier, below the surface of the water. We are only exposed to the tip, and we must take action facing the mirror: to look at what is beyond the edge of the iceberg - or to escape from it? Exposing ourselves to what is happening, or ignore it in order to protect ourselves? And has the ability to feel empathy in the face of destruction is completely lost to us?

Sahm's exhibition evokes thoughts about the personal and public danger inherent in the operation of the mental defense mechanisms we are so accustomed to in the age of information and visual flux. The mirror dividing the space into two acts as the surface of the sea, but does so deceptively, not allowing us to clearly decide whether we are above or below them. Is it their job to keep us away from what is happening behind the mirror, as acts of repression and disengagement seek to isolate us from "bad news"? Or is it actually the queen on the other side that is fastened within her world?

The mirror panel does not allow us to glance and sets us apart from what is happening - while Sahm urges us to try and overcome this separation. The wall that is meant to protect us, Sahm says, is precisely the thing that will destroy us: it dulls the senses, blocks the ability to identify and pushes aside difficulties and emotions that seek expression. Through the communication she establishes with viewers, Sahm actually invites us to come closer to the surface of the water, look her straight in the eye, and dare to listen with her to the toll of the bells. 


Hagar Brill, August 2019


The Bell has rung but the queen is underwater

'Wonderland:Construction', 2021, exhibited at DISKURS Berlin as part of an exhibition relay called 'It May Sound Utopian'.
The work was composed of a video loop played on a television screen in a black box constructed on the window of the gallery, a mirror that through it the viewer could see a paper tower,situated on the back of the black box. 
The work could only be viewed through the glass door and window of the gallery. 

Curatorial text by Anna Ratcliff:

Wonderland: Construction invites you to peer through the looking glass of DISKURS Berlin, where the white
cube has been turned into a black box. The window has been split in two, on one side a ghostly tower looms in
the foreground with the vision tricking our eyes as it shifts in space. On the other, the viewer sees a mirror
image of the tower, this time the spiraling summit reaching for heaven is not created of man-made concrete
but is ethereal and white.

Elinor Sahm has created a theatrical space where nothing is as it seems and the scene is created from light
and reflections seen through mirrors and glass. Sahm has an incredible way of making her work emerge as if it
has been around for an eternity: objects appear to be from lost cities and environments look as though they are
created from amethysts. This all adds an element of wonder which plays a large part in her work, however, the
enchanting settings deal with the darker side of human nature.

This installation is no different. The tower echoes that of Babylon, built from a utopian vision, it speaks of how
humans and civilizations are ruined by vanity and how miscommunication can lead to decay. Also, how
blinkered ambition and hubris can ultimately cause unbearable misunderstanding of a fellow human.

Just as Utopias are aspirational but inherently unattainable, Wonderland: Construction is a contradiction. A
wonderland is a finished ideal rather than a work in progress and utopias often turn out to be dystopias when
the destination is reached. There is always a disconnect between the idea and reality.

- Anna Ratcliffe, February 2021, Berlin.

Wonderland:Construction

'A Very Big Man', 2021, is the second edition of the research-based work. 
The first edition was exhibited as a part of GlogauAIR open studios event in September 2020.
Exhibited at Zuzu Gallery in Emek Hefer, Israel, the work was composed of a projection on seven black fabrics in a dark space, an artist book and an etching.


Curatorial text by Rotem Ritov:

In the 1930s in Germany, the Nazi Party came to power and trembled the country, then Europe, and then the entire world. In 1931, just before the Nazis came to power, despite the opposition of right-wing parties and thanks to President von Hindenburg's fondness for his classical figure, an unusual new mayor was elected in Berlin. In addition to being 215 centimeters tall, he regularly wore the cylinder hat, which created the visibility of a 19th-century Prussian Grandier. 
In berlin's grotesque and satirical cabaret shows, the mayor's colorful image starred and seemed to be one of the most popular mayors Berlin has ever known. The “New York Times” gave him nicknames and wrote about him as a hard-working public figure, straight as a ruler but not with a well-developed imagination, yet, one of the most colorful figures of the pre-Hitler era.

In 1933, Nazi supervisor Julius Lippert was appointed above him, and in 1935 bank officials informed the Nazi party that the mayor had written checks in honor of a Jewish-owned department store. As a result, Hitler put him on trial, fired him as mayor, and revoked his party membership. The former mayor later apologized and accepted Hitler's forgiveness. His honor was preserved and he retired in the civil service. Thus he left Germany for Norway, where he served as the official diplomatic envoy of the Nazi Party in Oslo. In October 1939, about a month after the outbreak of World War II, he died in Oslo after a short illness.

In a dark space, Elinor Sahm places a series of parallel black fabrics on which the image of that mayor is projected. Through the fabric layers, the figure gradually grows but also dims, the sharpness disappears and remains as intensified memory of an elusive image.

"Your great-grandfather was the mayor of Berlin from 1931 to 1935. His wife bought a fur coat in a Jewish shop, so Hitler exiled him to Oslo, where he died before the war began." The entire story of mayor Heinrich Sahm was reduced to this sentence which was repeatedly told to his Jerusalem-born great-granddaughter, Elinor Sahm. This story leaves the evil - evil, the good - a victim, and the catalyst - the hero of the hour, thus hermetically closes any possibility of error. There is no doubt about the nature of that great-grandfather's relationship with the Nazi Party and his wife's attitude towards Jews.

After many years of being satisfied with this limited story, Sahm began to come across information that cracked the plot and ignited curiosity and imagination along with a great fear of what might arise when asking more questions and exploring the past. Between searching in google, casually snooping in family albums in Germany and visiting the Prussian archives in Berlin, Sahm realized that the story layers are piling up along with new pieces of information that change the whole picture. 

"A Very Big Man" is an ongoing and breathing project born out of long research and delving into a family history interwoven with a history that is not personal nor private but in the public domain. Sahm developed a relationship with a ghost who holds her name, her genetics, her history, which she didn't choose but was born into. 


A Very Big Man (second edition)

'All Parts Are in My Favour' is a large-scale installation that was exhibited as a solo show during August-September 2021 at P8 Gallery, Tel-Aviv.
The work is composed of three parts. A total black space covered in felt, a wooden and metal tower holding candles (280 cm tall) and a propeller spinning at the top, and a corner piece made of wooden figurines, a mirror and a lit candle. 


curatorial text by Or Tshuva:

Before the consumerist festival that has become synonymous with Christmas in today’s Western culture, before even the stories about a loveable old man who comes from Lapland on a reindeer sleigh to deliver presents to children, German families used to decorate their homes with Christmas Pyramids. These were multilevel tapered wooden structures, decked with candles and Nativity figurines. Such a pyramid was also kept in the childhood home of multidisciplinary artist Elinor Sahm, the daughter of a mother who was also an artist, descendant of a long line of Jerusalemite Sephardic Jews, and a German Protestant father who came to Israel in the 1970s. 
All Parts Are in My Favour unfolds an attempt to touch on the fraught past of the artist’s family. Her brother, Raphael, took his own life at the age of 25, about three weeks after 12-year-old Sahm celebrated her Bat Mitzvah. From there, it seems that the entire family unit started to fall apart. The Christmas Pyramid serves Sahm as the starting point for the personal and artistic exploration that has accompanied her practice in recent years. On the one hand, it embodies the German heritage she absorbed as a child through grand tales about the family connection to Baron Munchausen, magnificent castles, and a great-grandfather who was the mayor of Berlin on the eve of World War II. On the other hand, for her it also symbolizes one of the clearest, and unfortunately also one of the last, memories of an idyllic family life. One that gathers to celebrate Christmas together and enjoy each other's company.
Like the family at the heart of the exhibition, the monumental version of the pyramid placed in the middle of the dark gallery has also undergone deconstruction and rethinking. Originally, these structures were topped by a propeller that would spin around as the heat from the candles below reached it, as though moved by magic. However, the aesthetic that the artist chose does not invoke Christmas or the childish wonderment she felt in front of the pyramid, but rather brings to mind a monument or mausoleum. The structure also conjures up images of the Tower of Babel (a recurring motif in Sahm’s works) as a foreshadowing of the narrative of the family’s disintegration and dissemination.
As part of the deconstruction of the image, the propeller in Sahm's installation now spins using a motorized engine. Even the Nativity angels and Magi figurines were removed from their original place on the pyramid and form their own deceptive interaction in the corner of the gallery. The title of the exhibition hints, among other things, at the disintegration of the image into its elements, but also attests to the wider process that the artist experienced in her attempts to touch on the raw areas in her biography. Working from a place of trauma, as Sahm relates, triggered overwhelming experiences, along with a fundamental need to act out of willful repression at times. The title that she chose was born out of the realization that both the painful parts and the repression itself are integral to the defense mechanisms of the human psyche.


Add

Elinor Sahm

Priests Warning

The Bell has rung but the queen is underwater

Wonderland:Construction

A Very Big Man (second edition)

All Parts Are in My Favour