Ayelet Carmi

Biography

Carmi was born in 1967 in Kibbutz Beit HaShita. She is a graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. Her works are characterized by feminine figures in mythological settings, organic hybrids and evocative machinery. Based in traditional painterly technique, her works offer a complex take on the representational style of the Western tradition while opening up to a world of imaginary figments and metamorphoses.

Galia Bar Or, the director and curator of The Museum of Art in Ein Harod, considers Carmi as: “the inventor of a new genre of painting all her own. Cleverly escaping the entrapments of traditional painting, her work engages in a deep and thoughtful dialogue with relational depth patterns, its highly sensitized nervous system producing art that is nuanced, lightweight and fragmentary. […] Boundless and deeply personal, Carmi's version of [the myth of the artist] is channeled through the female nudes that dominate her work, women whose brushstrokes continuously recreate a world in painting – recreating but never appropriating. Essentially open-ended, her works come together and unravel as they echo a painterly realm suffused with architecture, politics, rites, theatrical sets, imagery and identities."

Carmi's pieces in two-dimensional media often consist of "an overlay of thin, see-trough papers [...] It appears as though they are sculptures forced into two dimensions, as if trying to break the limits of their own form."

Recently, she has been developing new work in video and performance in collaboration with artist Meirav Heiman. Carmi holds teaching positions at the Holon Institute of Technology (HIT), Hamidrasha School of Art in Beit Berl College and The Tel Aviv Museum's Meyerhoff Art Education Center.

Exhibitions

Carmi has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Art Ein Harod, The Haifa Museum of Art, The Kibbutz Gallery in Tel Aviv and the Jerusalem Artists House, among other venues in Israel. She participated in group exhibitions locally and internationally, showing her work at The Tel Aviv Museum of Art, The Museum of Israeli Art in Ramat Gan, The Janco Dada Museum in Ein Hod, the Alexander Ochs Gallery in Berlin and more.

Awards

2010 Creative Encouragement Grant, the Israeli Ministry of Culture & Sport 2003 Honorable mention, First Portrait project, Pais Council for the Arts, Israel

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2015 Ayelet Carmi, Haifa Museum of Art, Israel
2015 The Slick, Rosh-Hanikra Gallery, Israel
2013 A Person Worries, Museum of Art, Ein Harod, Israel
2010 Two Thousand Feet, Gallery 39, Tel Aviv
2010 Schatten der Flügel, Liberale Jüdische Gemeinde, Hannover, Germany
2008 Alexantropia, Gallery 39, Tel Aviv
2004 Siamese Twins, Museum of Art Ein Harod, Israel
2003 Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming, The Kibbutz Gallery, Tel Aviv
2000 My Last Travels in the Continent, The Kibbutz Gallery, Tel Aviv
1996 The Jerusalem Artists House
1996 Paintings, The Kibbutz Gallery, Tel Aviv

Selected Group Exhibitions

2016 Between Synapses, The Jerusalem Artists House
2015 Local Pulse 2, The Artists' House, Tel Aviv
2014 Office Session III, Anchorage House, London, UK
2013 Traces V: The 5th Biennale for Drawing in Israel, The Jerusalem Artists House
2012 The Cheerful Mummy, Museum of Israeli Art, Ramat Gan, Israel
2012 Living Room Talks, The Artists' House, Tel Aviv
2012 Art Any Way: Exploring the Wheel, Tel Aviv Museum of Art
2012 Earth Nature, The Artists Residence, Herzliya, Israel
2011 2010 Winners: The Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture Prizes for Art and Design, The Museum of Israeli Art, Ramat Gan, Israel
2011 Scales and Measures, Pavillon am Milchhof, Berlin, Germany
2011 Site-Specific Wall Works, Janco Dada Museum, Ein Hod, Israel
2011 Update Your Reality: Artists from Israel, Alexander Ochs Gallery, Berlin
2010 More than Canvas, Tel Aviv Museum of Art
2005 On the Banks of the Yarkon, Tel Aviv Museum of Art
1994 Separate Worlds, Tel Aviv Museum of Art