Lecture Hadas Satt

Hadas Satt
Born 1981 in Israel,
lives and works in Tel Aviv

Working mainly in photography and photographic installations, Satt earned her MFA and her BFA from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design.

Satt’s works have been shown in solo and group exhibitions at venues such as Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, the MOCA museum Shanghai, The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, The Tel Aviv museum, Hit Gallery in Bratislava, RawArt Gallery and Hezi Cohen Gallery in Tel Aviv, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, and the POV Festival.

Her works can be found in private and public collections including The Israel Museum Collection, The Tel Aviv museum, Hoche Art collection, and The Shpilman Institute for Photography Collection.

Artist statement
I conceptualize the camera as a visual organ detached from a central nervous system; a disembodied eye unheeding of the brain’s habitual commands. While constantly facilitating and inhibiting stimuli, our brain regularly corrects perceptual distortions, turns the images imprinted on our retina right side up, and creates hierarchies of relevance from what is otherwise an abstract array of physical relations. The camera exposes the relationship between the photographer and the physical world.

I find that the core of existential experience is essentially embodied in the emphasis given to how near or how far we are from objects. From this stems the phenomenological aspect of my work. I am interested in the distances between myself and the things around me. Many of my works begin with looking intently at the gap between the ground and the treetops, my hand and the sky, myself and a bat hanging upside down as I take its portrait. I »measure« this distance through photography and by doing so, eliminate it.

My creative practice consists of prolonged processes of recording the experience of things in the world and re-contextualizing them. I begin by gathering objects, stories and images focused on direct experience and utilize them to produce new structures of meaning. This, to me, draws attention to the physical properties of photographic materials so the complete work often contains both figurative and sculptural qualities.

I am drawn to public gardens and wildlife parks where my camera serves to mediate their observed cultural perception. I edit my work both during and after the photographic process in order to create engineered spaces in which I explore the constant tension between the natural and artificial. Photography here serves as a documentary tool, recording the reciprocal effects of technology on biology, while simultaneously creating the world anew.