I name it, and then it comes into the world

Interview with artist Efrat Hakimi by Marina Resende Santos

 Efrat Hakimi is an artist and engineer from Tel Aviv currently based in Chicago. In her work, she studies objects and sites that relate to her experiences as a woman and an immigrant; and how power, violence, and models of failed masculinity shape narratives. Her neon piece Time, currently on view at 6018|North in Chicago, prompted a conversation about the presence of  text and names in Hakimi’s work.

I would like to begin with Time, the neon piece you have in the Windows to the World exhibition at 6018|North, that suggests time breaking or melting. I am intrigued by the neon light, the use of words, and the subject, all of which I haven’t seen in your other works. 

Efrat Hakimi: I made that work in a class while a graduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Dealing with the history of modern gynecology for my thesis project was politically and emotionally intense, and I needed some time to just enjoy making something with my hands. I thought about the Time piece as a clock, and I would set it to blink every second. It is a contemplation about time.

The idea of time actually came from a poem by Yehuda Amichai. One line stuck with me, about how time is not really in the clock; it’s not part of its mechanism. It reads, in a rough translation: “Mirror (or See), just as time is not inside the clocks /So love is not within the bodies, /The bodies only show love.”

Maybe that also led me to give up on the blinking light: if the piece wants to show time, it doesn’t have to show it the way that other clocks do.

How did text enter your work? 

My engagement with text began when I started making videos. I was researching Dr. James Marion Sims, who prototyped the gynecological tool called the speculum, and how his statue was going to be removed in New York. A big question was how to charge my work with all this information. How do I bring it to a point of saturation between the knowledge that comes along with the work, and the work itself? At some point, I thought this should be an essay, and not an artwork. In the end, I decided to work with video, which allowed me to insert text more naturally.

Because I’m a visual artist, you might think I would approach my videos from the construction of the frame, but I’m actually guided by the text. I’m looking for a story to be told, and I locate my narrators, then edit based on their input. And that’s up to them – I don’t script their dialogue. Often, this is how a work begins: I think about its name. I name it, then it comes into the world.

Can you give me an example of a work that started from the title? 

The research that led into my thesis project came from a name. Before coming to Chicago, I was making a sculpture in my studio and I gave it a name. That word sounded familiar, so I looked it up and discovered that it was actually the name of that tool, the speculum. The Hebrew name indicates the action it performs, which is to dilate the cervix. I thought there must be something wrong with that tool, about the way it constitutes the relationship between myself and my doctor. And all these linguistic and prototyping decisions have to do with the ideology that come with the creation of a thing.

Let’s talk about your current projects. Do they also involve text?

I’m working with my partner, Shabtai Pinchevsky, on a project for Asylum, a Jewish art organization that called for artwork that can be accessed from anywhere during the pandemic, for the High Holidays, the Jewish New Year, which are coming up. On the days leading to Rosh Hashana, mostly Orthodox Jews practice the Tashlikh, which means “cast-off,” when they go to a body of water and symbolically release their sins by throwing into it any residuals they have on them. So we are creating a virtual Tashlikh. The website will show the closest body of water, or you can type in where you want to throw your own troubles or pains, as well as global or cultural sins. Once logged in, you can also look around the world map for what others have cast off. In the Jewish calendar, this is the time for reflection. With the pandemic and the social uprisings, we felt that these are also times when a lot of people are engaging in reflection worldwide.

Marina Resende Santos is a researcher and artist based. She studied comparative literature and German at the University of Chicago and her interviews with artists have been published on THE SEEN, Sixty Inches From Center and Newcity. This interview was created as a part of the 6018North Writer’s Workshop.