Something broke. Life encounters death. What lies beyond?
A health crisis. A serious illness, the outcome of which is unknown. Where is it safe? Under the covers, hiding away from the cold and the nameless? In the bright, shining hallways of a hospital?
The fence is a kind of rift. Like death, it cannot be traversed, but unlike death one can peak over it. What’s behind it? Maybe there’s a different, better world waiting for those of us who dare cross the line?
In The Rift, Gil Ben Hador presents a series of conflicts and crises, of attempts to cope with death – and of moments of a fractured hope for a better future.
Through his own unique method, Ben Hador combines the near with the distant, the sharp with the vague and the analogue with the digital, creating images which question the way we perceive life and the world around us. He does this using a device of his own invention called a “periscamera”: A simple garbage can from which he removed the bottom and on top of which he installed a single-mirror periscope, so that the view it captures is reflected onto the surface upon which the can was placed. A downward-facing digital camera photographs the double image that is thus created on that surface.
