Corona Journal: Shahar Marcus from Tel Aviv

We asked artists around the world, who are close to the Haus am Waldsee through exhibitions, what their situation is like at the moment.

Shahar Marcus on 21 March 2020 from Tel Aviv

I’m sitting now in my studio and teaching video art with an online program. Luckily the universities are still open for online learning so I still have a lot of work. We are currently told in Israel to stay at home and go only out to the supermarket or for work with under 10 people. Of course all cultural events are closed and canceled.

Yesterday I was supposed to launch my new catalog in the Eretz Israel museum as part of my solo exhibition. Of course it was canceled and my show went down. I just finished hanging a new exhibition in a gallery and the exhibition didn’t open to the public at the end. My mutual exhibition with Nezaket Ekici in Stadtgalerie Nordhorn is closed now after a great opening and a performance we managed to do on the 21 February just before the world began to shut down.

All future exhibitions I have are postponed and canceled. But I see myself lucky that I still have a job and that I have a warm family (wife and two daughters) that are with me the whole time and we have a lot of family time together.

I hope for better brighter days.

Shahar Marcus was born in Israel in 1971 and now lives as a video and performance artist in Tel Aviv. Since 2012 he has been working with the Turkish-German performance artist Nezaket Ekici, who had a major solo exhibition at Haus am Waldsee in 2015. In 2018, the live performance “Honey Project” with Nezaket Ekici and Shahar Marcus took place as part of a summer festival in the house’s sculpture park.

Photos: Andreas Dammertz