One giant step for man
Smadar Sheffi, Haaretz Guide, Pg 20, 16 September 2011

"Line Made by Walking," Haifa Museum of Art (extract)

Presently on display at the Haifa Museum of Art, "Line Made by Walking" is one of two exhibitions mounted under the umbrella title "Formally Speaking." The accompanying text describes these shows as a "contemplation of art in terms of form or medium. The form will be a line, the most basic from art's reservoir of forms, and the medium painting. Only that the line is made by walking, and therefore it is saturated - with physicality and politics - 21st-century formalism is a whole new story: the lines are spawned by walking - and the language of art is inseparable from the stuff of life."

The exhibition offers the opportunity to view works that have been dispayed this past year at different spaces, like by Hadas Hassid at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art and the wonderful, refined work by Shilpa Gupta, featured in her solo exhibition at Dvir Gallery in Tel Aviv. The title of the work (as of show), "2652," refers to the number of steps that the artist took as she walked between the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Western Wall and the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. The work comprises small photographs of people walking. It seems as if these images were randomly captured by the camera, in the sense that they don't feel staged. They are printed on a narrow strip of canvas (only 4 cm wide) that is 42 meters in length. The connection that Gupta establishes through walking puts the bloodridden religious conflict in a new perspective, as she walks from places that symbolize each religion, measuring the tiny distance that separates them.

The walking-pilgrimage by Gupta also makes reference to tourism, in many respects the modern incarnation of pilgrimage. The museum window that faces the street features an additional work by the artist showing a line of people in the sea. The image brings to mind purification and immersion rituals that are shared by a number of religions, along with references to immigration and wandering.