5:48
This short film about Hilla Toony Navok, a multi-disciplinary artist, was commissioned by Fireflies, an initiative by Vered Gadish, to represent young artists, and expand the influence, accessibility, and presence of regional art in the broader global community.
Navok traces degraded forms of high modernism and abstraction in popular consumer products. Grounding such items in abstract forms, she questions and complicates their given functions. At the same time, her playful sculptural use of vernacular materials problematizes the very notion of display. The language of design serves her in questioning our relationship to order as well as to our own bodies.
Navok’s approach to her source-materials is informed by ambivalence: she is simultaneously critical and empathetic, attracted and repulsed, playful and melancholic, analytical and intuitive. Embodying these contradictions, her works are both monumental and fragile, performative and sculptural, two- and three-dimensional.
Produced by Sternthal Books. Edited + Directed by Ian Sternthal, 2020.
Cinematography by Amihai Zlotnik, Dafy Hagai, & Geert Van Kesteren.
A Fireflies Project Film.
