I’m a photographer and digital media artist working at the intersection of architecture,
archives, technology, and politics. In my works, I use 3D modeling, mapping, internet-based tools, and more
to examine archival photographic materials and their relations to geographies of conflict and displacement,
especially in Palestine. My practice is engaged with issues of social justice, human rights, and
anti-colonialism, and their application in art and media.
Shabtai Pinchevsky
SELECTED
OTHER WORKS
Artist Statement
I’m a
photographer
and digital media artist working in the intersection of architecture, archives, technology, and politics. My works are self-interrogations threaded into subjects of a larger scale – the myths, landscapes, taboos, and images that form the foundations of identity and place.
In my works, I use digital tools to create augmented, site-specific representations of contested landscapes and geographies in Palestine’s colonization history. I create layered and juxtaposed virtual spaces to critically examine how image-making and photography not only contributed to the Zionist colonial projects but were also affected by the tasks they lent themselves to.
My practice encompasses many tools, disciplines, and media. I work with archival material, mapping practices, writing, simulated videos, three-dimensional digital modeling, and more. Working in a three-dimensional digital environment allows me to step outside the photographic pyramid of vision and study the complications and entanglements of the medium as an outside witness. By employing a diverse set of technological and conceptual tools, I can closely interrogate historical and contemporary visual material and reconsider the context of their creation.
In my research projects, I often study and work with historical material, not to evoke nostalgia but to find sources for the contemporary entanglements that serve as my departing points. I make my works to embody and personify the complexities of living, working, and creating under the social and political landscape of post-colonial states. While I do not intend my works to resolve, I hope they serve, for audiences and me, as a small step in the long path of correction.
My practice encompasses many tools, disciplines, and media. I work with archival material, mapping practices, writing, simulated videos, three-dimensional digital modeling, and more. Working in a three-dimensional digital environment allows me to step outside the photographic pyramid of vision and study the complications and entanglements of the medium as an outside witness. By employing a diverse set of technological and conceptual tools, I can closely interrogate historical and contemporary visual material and reconsider the context of their creation.
In my research projects, I often study and work with historical material, not to evoke nostalgia but to find sources for the contemporary entanglements that serve as my departing points. I make my works to embody and personify the complexities of living, working, and creating under the social and political landscape of post-colonial states. While I do not intend my works to resolve, I hope they serve, for audiences and me, as a small step in the long path of correction.
Within the field of research-based art, my interest extends from the practice of research to its placement within the public domain. I believe that research should not be limited to the discovery or creation of exclusive artifacts but should be engaged with the production and dissemination of knowledge, which in turn can lead to public action, acknowledgment, and inclusion. In this way, I see my practice as politically engaged.
My most recent works engage with their subject matter using texts and my own voice. My written texts place me, their speaker, in an immediate role within the context of the works. I’m not an outside observer but an implicated actor within the territories I explore. My writing has been a way to inform objects that otherwise might be expected to ‘speak for themselves.’ In my practice, I’m committed to unabashedly formulating a political and moral stance using images and words.
My most recent works engage with their subject matter using texts and my own voice. My written texts place me, their speaker, in an immediate role within the context of the works. I’m not an outside observer but an implicated actor within the territories I explore. My writing has been a way to inform objects that otherwise might be expected to ‘speak for themselves.’ In my practice, I’m committed to unabashedly formulating a political and moral stance using images and words.