Uriel Orlow’s artistic work is dedicated to the blind spots in memory and history. In several artistic works, his current project “Unmade Film” outlines a thematic complex from which a film can be individually associated. The project was first shown in Jerusalem in spring 2013 at the Al-Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art. With extensions and modifications, the exhibition made a stop at the Centre culturel suisse before being shown in Zurich at Les Complices*. Parallel to the exhibition series, a publication has been produced, which has been published in three extended preliminary editions successively to the respective exhibitions.
In “Unmade Film” Uriel Orlow explores a complex historical circumstance. The point of departure for the works is the psychiatric clinic Kfar Sha’ul, located in the northwest of Jerusalem. When it was founded, it specialized in the treatment of people whose mental suffering could be traced back to events of the Holocaust. The clinic is located in the buildings of the Arab village of Deir Yasin, whose population fell victim to a massacre by paramilitary Zionist units in 1948. This overlapping of multiple (memory and historical) blind spots and the psychological dimensions of infestation and trauma form the basis of Uriel Orlow’s approach. There are no completed works in his exhibitions. As a combination of multimedia narratives running side by side, the visitor is invited to create new references and participate in the thought process.