The Precious Stones

#04 What is the White City?
The Precious Stones
Artist: Danielle Alhassid
Curator: Sabrina Cegla

In the fourth Project Room exhibition artist Danielle Alhassid addresses the question “What is the White City?” with the installation The Precious Stones, a series of stop-motion animation videos that question urban experience and memory.
The animations center on the history and myth of Alhassid’s hometown, Tel Aviv, also as the White City. They cast a critical gaze at the official narrative that formed around the city, seeking traces of hidden histories. All the while Alhassid presents her own versions of the story of the White City.
Alhassid’s city lies in the gap between myth and private memories, between universal metaphor and concrete experience. Through these cracks she invites back into the historical urban space marginalized figures and stories.
In the animation Born from Sea and Cloud different voices mingle with the artist's voice, whispering the names of forgotten Palestinian villages. In What’s Gone is Gone the artist talks with her grandmother who explains why she cut her image out of photos. In the third animation, Eliyahu, Alhassid’s great grandfather is an angel of history roaming the city he once knew. Each work depicts stones as symbols of memory containing the illusion of the existence of a “true” story that they never reveal. Alhassid evokes everyday acts of repression and creation of memory.
Taken together the animations form an installation of a fragmented landscape that cannot be fully grasped. Each tells a different story. Thus the installation stays true to the experience of the city it seeks to represent.

Events:

Performance tour – It Will Walk Itself Off
Saturday, 8.1.2022, first round: 11 a.m.; second round: 1 p.m.
Link to registration:
https://www.whitecitycenter.org/events/Performative-Tour-%E2%80%93--It-Will-Walk-Itself-Off

Artist talk – online
Wednesday, 2.3.2022, 8 p.m.

Performance tour – It Will Walk Itself Off
Saturday, 9.4.2022, first round: 11 a.m.; second round: 1 p.m.

Danielle Alhassid is an Israeli multidisciplinary artist, living and working in Tel Aviv and New York. She is a graduate of the Rietveld Academie in (2020), Amsterdam, NL. She is currently completing her studies for an MFA at Hunter College, New York. Her works involve stop- motion animation, video, printmaking and performance, and focuses on the intersection of memory, identity, immigration and urban life