Minimal and playful, Noa Giniger’s work is founded on the idea that nothing is stable, secure, or steady. As a consequence, a substantial part of her work relates to longing and the bittersweet of letting go. She investigates modes of navigation in this world, physical and emotional, inspired by systems of mapping and measurement, language and naming, natural laws and social codes. She explores the ways in which time and intimacy are linked, and addresses the difficulty of capturing intimacy with words. She uses different modes of collaboration and the ecosystem of the arts, creating occasions for collaborative practices and access. The outcomes of her projects include site-specific installations in both private and public space, sound, video, websites, objects, works on paper and writing. Additionally, Noa represents half of the spoken-word-poetry duo Noon & Ain with musician Anat Spiegel.
Noa Giniger graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris and attended the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. She was a participant in the two-year program De Ateliers, Amsterdam; a Royal Dutch Institute Affiliated Fellow at the American Academy, Rome; an artist in residence at Villa Empain – Fondation Boghossian, Brussels and at Artport Tel Aviv. Her work has been presented in various international solo and group exhibitions including ICA, Philadelphia; Western Front, Vancouver; Air de Paris, Paris; De Appel, Amsterdam; among others. Noa is also a board member at Tohu – an independent online art magazine dedicated to promoting clear and engaged writing about art and culture in Hebrew, Arabic, and English; and at puntWG – an artist-run experimental community and presentation space in Amsterdam. Noa Giniger lives and works in Amsterdam.
CONTACT
Marius van Bouwdijk Bastiaansestraat 153
1054 RW, Amsterdam
Netherlands
neshama(at)gmail.com
@noa.giniger
CREDITS
Clare Butcher
fanfare & Haris Hadžić
Mondriaan Fonds
The Contemporary Centre for Art | Residency
November 2021, May 2022, January 2023
The Contemporary Centre for Art, Arad, IL
Artists Residence Herzliya | Residency
September – October 2021
Artists Residence Herzliya, Herzliya, IL
Artport | Residency
April – June 2021
Artport, Tel Aviv, IL
Open skies | Group Show
Curator: Avi Lubin
12 – 14 November 2020
Loving Art. Making Art. Tel Aviv, IL
The Sorrow the Joy Brings | Online contribution
Invitation by Tal Yahas and Rinat Edelstein
המצאת הטבע Issue #30, Harama (on-line magazine), 2020
Poeticising Leisure | Group show
29 May – 11 July 2020
Althuis Hofland Fine Arts, Amsterdam, NL
Viral Self-Portraits | Online Exhibition
Invited by Galit Eilat
15 May – 31 December 2020
MG+MSUM, Ljubljana, SI
Chapter 3HREE | Artist Talk
8 March 2020, 4 – 5 p.m.
With Desiree Dolron, Noa Giniger and Maria Roosen
Het Hem, Zaandam, NL
Limited Edition Art Fair | Prints and Multiples
14 – 16 February 2020
Fondation Boghossian – Villa Empain, Brussles, BE
Chapter 3HREE | Group show
Curated by Rieke Vos and Maarten Spruyt
14 January – 3 May 2020
Het Hem, Zandaam, NL
Mondriaan Fonds | Grant
Receiver of Stipendium for Established Artists
(Werkbijdrage Bewezen Talent)
2018 – 2022
Flowers of Our Land | Group Show
Curator: Udi Edelman
16 February – 18 May 2019
Israeli Centre for Digital art in Holon, IL
Get Lost Dreams | Online contribution
Invitation by Tal Yahas and Rinat Edelstein
Futures Issue #25, Harama (on-line magazine), 2019
Noon & Ain in Nanopoetica | Special contribution
Edited by alex Ben-Ari
Second Hebrew Anthology of Conceptual Poetry
Launch: 21 November 2019
Print screen Festival, Israeli Centre for Digital art in Holon, Israel
Leaving Living | Screening
Curator: Jean-Marie Gallais
9 December 2018, 6 p.m.
Centre Pompidou-Mertz, Mertz, FR
Cool Loneliness | Solo Exhibition
Initiated and organized by Sascha Pohle and Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec
Exhibition: 14 – 15 July 2018
Opening: 13 July 2008, 6 – 9 p.m.
Home Sequence
בשנים האחרונות, הבוץ גדל | Online contribution
Invitation by Tal Yahas and Rinat Edelstein
Chain Reaction, Issue #21, Harama (on-line magazine), 2018
Unwilling: Exercise in Melancholy | Group show
Curators: Vanessa Kwan and Kimberly Phillips
Exhibition: 12 March – 28 April 2018
Artists talk: 21 March 2018, 5 p.m.
Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford College, PA, USA
Multiples and Editions | Group show
The Hazenstraat Biennale: 15 – 31 March 2018
Gallery Martin van Zomeren, Amsterdam, NL
The Merry-Go-Round (part 2) | Group Show
Curator: Jeanine Holfland
Exhibition: 16 February – 3 March 2018
Juliette Jongma Gallery, Amsterdam, NL
As Long As | Limited Edition ⏳?
NU NU NU NOW NOW NOW
Stedelijk Museum Shop, Amsterdam, NL
Website [www.recalculatingroute.info]
Screen size
Online since 31.12.2008
Website [www.recalculatingroute.info]
Screen size
Online since 31.12.2008
Every night at midnight in my local time-zone, a new headline is posted on the website – generic words of wisdom and advice that have been culled from a daily horoscope allegedly created in response to the date and time of my birth. Black text on a white background: each entry creates an intimate encounter with a sentence so general that it becomes endlessly relatable, holding potential meaning for every reader to identify. As the proverbs and guidelines offered by Recalculating Route change daily, there is no access to the previous sentences and no opportunity to take a glance at future ones. The title of the work emerges from the vocabulary of GPS device when calculating the route to a given destination.
Recalculating Route is the first part of the online trilogy, No Time for Nostalgia [dot] Now.
Design: Sam de Groot
Production: Thijs Gadiot, Harris Blondman
related works:
35mm film transferred to HD, sound, 5’57”
Variable dimensions
2013
35mm film transferred to HD, sound, 5’57”
Variable dimensions
2013
The film traces the attempt to uplift a weeping willow with the help of artificial wind, using industrial motion picture fans. The soundtrack is of the natural ambiance.“A film which depicts this momentary shift in the tree’s physical form and questions our associations with its appearance, and its name. In its efforts to put a weeping willow in a good mood The Sorrow the Joy Bring evokes the human will to control nature and our attempts to influence and control our own emotions. The lengths to which Giniger goes to manipulate the tree articulates our human aversion to displays of sadness. As well, the project is in conversation with the history of the creative manipulation of landscapes, from ancient gardens to contemporary land art and public performance practices.” (Jesse Birch – from the press release for the exhibition Absolute Countdown, Western Front, 2013).
This film was produced on the occasion of the exhibition Absolute Countdown at Western Front, with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund, Stichting Schürmann-Krant and Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society.
related works:
Sound installation, 3’42” in loop
2008
Sound installation, 3’42” in loop
2008
The song Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime, performed by Frank Sinatra, is played in the empty space. Only this line is heard accompanied by silent intervals in respect to its original recurrence in the song’s lyrics. The “sometime” and the “somebody” which were concrete in the original song and referred to a specific temporality and person, here become arbitrary and impersonal, as they echo in the empty bright space.
related works:
Engraved text on trees
Variable dimensions
2015
Engraved text on trees
Variable dimensions
2015
Both Sides Now (On Shuffle) is composed of eleven titles engraved on the bark of different trees around the park. The titles are taken from Joni Mitchell’s album Both Sides Now which traces the arc of the modern romantic relationship. In the words of musician Larry Klein: “from initial flirtation through optimistic consummation, metamorphosing into disillusionment, ironic despair, and finally resolving in the philosophical overview of acceptance and the probability of the cycle repeating itself”. The work is named after the last track which shares its title with the album, and is the only one not engraved.Spread around the park without any precise indications of the location of each engraved tree, the work takes on the associative gesture of a popular music technology and “shuffles” the titles of the album’s songs around the park. I chose not to give any precise indication of their locations of each engraved tree in order to offer the visiting public an unplanned encounter with each title; an intimate experience.These botanical relics have a limited lifespan; etched into living wood, their existence is typically limited to that of the tree. Their form shifts slowly over time. As the seasons transition, this organic work changes constantly, without my control. The work also raises questions around marking and possessing landscape, while offering a poignant response to the often male-dominated tradition of Land Art.
related works:
Three paper stacks, offset print on paper
Installation dimensions variable (Stacks here 24 x 70 x 50 cm)
2009
Three paper stacks, offset print on paper
Installation dimensions variable (Stacks here 24 x 70 x 50 cm)
2009
The installation consists of three paper stacks, which invite viewer to take a sheet. On each is printed one of the pairs in the title. The stacks are positioned throughout the space so that “TOO LATE” is the last, thereby guiding the viewer through the space to face each proposition singularly.The impetus for the work came from a found record featuring on one side a song called Too Much, Too Little, Too Late and on the other Emotion; two sides of the same single. The resulting sculpture inevitably changes, diminishing in height and weight throughout the course of the exhibition.
related works:
Exhibition with Bas Jan Ader, Halina Kliem, Jennifer Tee
Curated by Noa Giniger
puntWG, Amsterdam, NL
2014
Exhibition with Bas Jan Ader, Halina Kliem, Jennifer Tee
Curated by Noa Giniger
puntWG, Amsterdam, NL
2014
The word ‘status’, by definition, refers to a given now which does not necessarily guarantee its relevance for the moments to follow. Therefore, it expresses a position that is subject to constant examination and change. Social media has appropriated the word status and incorporated it into today’s jargon as a space for sharing one’s feelings, thoughts and actions with friends and followers — ‘What is on your mind?’. This endless verbose time-line is an attempt to not let any moment be forgotten or left behind.Status brings together works by three artists in which text – the written word – performs as solid matter and confronts its own unstable and fragile content. Words are presented in different techniques: installation, video and sculpture, thus offering different encounters with text; hand-written, typed, and engraved. The pieces shift between temporary and permanent, laconic and wordy, restless and stillness, awareness and oblivion, spirit and matte. Thoughts Unsaid, Then Forgotten (1973) by Bas Jan Ader is a wall-text installation, illuminated by a lamp and paired with flowers in a vase. This reconstruction of the piece is following drafted instructions; the sentence is traced, based on the original handwriting. The decaying flowers and the text about forgetting, emphasize Ader’s attraction to the inescapability of loss in fleeting moments. Thoughts will be forgotten, whether unsaid or spoken aloud, and Ader’s laconic phrase does not guarantee otherwise.The two videos from the series Real World (2007-2008) by Halina Kliem are fast and intensive. The restless typing creates a rhythm that is occasionally disrupted by re-writing and correcting. Each video lasts a few minutes before repeating itself. Here, the linear time-line is replaced by an eternal loop. Expressed as an inner monologue, Real World explores the boundaries between art and life, fiction and truth, and as the videos are simultaneously watched and read, the text turns into a form of poetry.As if observing from the mezzanine, a collection of works by Jennifer Tee is displayed; nine pairs of ceramic urns, colorful in a spectrum of glazed soft pastels. The sculptures, among which are Thought~Forms, Wild~Patience, and Occult~Geometry (all 2014), are arranged on a long table. They are a hybrid of a tomb and a totem, striving for eternal duration beyond decay. One word is stamped on each of them. Isolated but paired, the urns do not tell a narrative but a riddle. Hence, by placing them outside of their regular context, the words resonate different vibrations that transcend their common use.
Status was made possible with the support of Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunt (AFK).
related works: