Sala-manca’s Garage Sale | Solo (selling) Exhibition
Sala-manca’s Garage Sale | Solo (selling) Exhibition Kfar Saba Municipal Gallery | Curator: Meira Perry-Lehmann |24.5-24.7 The last exhibition presented at the Kfar Saba City Gallery during the current school year is also the last show – for the time being – by the Jerusalem-based Sala-Manca Group, whose members, Lea Mauas and Diego Rotman, are about to travel to Canada, to study there for one year. The Sala-Manca Group, active for the past eighteen years, is known for subversive, independent, dynamic artistic creation in different fields: performance, video, installation, and new media. In 2009 Mauas and Rotman founded the Mamuta Art and Media Center, which offers creators in a variety of fields a framework for encounters, research and exhibition. The Center was first situated at the Jerusalem home of the artist Daniela Passal, and since 2013 has a space at Hansen House in the city. Over the years, Sala-Manca Group activities have taken place mainly in Jerusalem, only occasionally showing elsewhere. All proceeds from the “garage sale” will be used to produce the next chapter in the “Argentinian-Israeli telenovela” The Story of Batya M, which the Sala-Manca Group created for the 2006 Bat Yam International Festival for Theater and Street Art. A telenovela is a genre of serial drama produced mainly in Latin America, characterized by melodramatic story lines that aim to evoke strong emotions in the viewer. Typically shorter than the soap opera of the English-speaking world, events in the telenovela are usually set within the span of a year or less, and are faster-paced. The first chapter of The Story of Batya M, which is 40 minutes long, was screened with live dubbing by the actors who portray the telenovela’s main protagonists – that is, the couple Mauas and Rotman, who comprise the Sala-Manca Group. Featured alongside them are their daughter, Ashu, friends, and other family members. The work straddles the gamut between live show and TV program, between mass communication culture and avant-garde performance, between melodrama and social commentary. By producing a sequel whose events take place seven years later the artists intend to turn the work into a slower, postmodern telenovela. Meira Perry-Lehmann |