Tal Dekel is Head of the Visual Literacy Program and Curatorial Studies Track at the Kibbutzim College, and lecturer at the Gender Studies Program, Tel Aviv University. She specializes in contemporary visual culture in Israel. Taking a particular interest in identity construction processes under the nation-state, she pays special attention to intersectionality – race, class, gender, religion and sexuality – in order to analyze manifestations of xenophobia and sexism, as well as religious and class prejudice. Recently, she is engaged in a research project about women, old age, and migration in Israel. Her publications include Gendered – Art and Feminist Theory (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), Transnational Identities – Women, Art and Migration in Contemporary Israel (Wayne State University Press, 2016) and she co-edited the book The Monk and the Lion – Contemporary Ethiopian-Israeli Art (Achoti Press, 2017).
Tal Dekel
Gender and Senses: The Art of Anisa Ashkar
Anisa Ashkar's work uses the different senses to problematize the intersection of categories that compose together her multi-layered identity. Tal Dekel visits her recent solo show and writes about Ashkar's use of the whole sensorium to blend categories, destabilize and dismantle them.