Road Shots: Security Road; Highway 449, the New Old Road to Jericho; Highway 60, Nablus (Laser Cut Photographs 60x40)
Public Studio (Elle Flanders and Tamira Sawatzky)
Road shots is a series of photographs that trace the political landscape remaining at the core of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. The laser cut patterns, designed in Auto Cad, take their cue from Islamic architectural ornamentation. Obscuring the image, these screens create barriers in the landscape while simultaneously rendering the photograph into a three dimensional object. Originally exhibited at O’Born Contemporary Gallery, Toronto (2012).
Biographies
Public Studio is the collective art practice of filmmaker Elle Flanders and architect Tamira Sawatzky. Public Studio creates large-scale public artworks, lens-based works, films, and immersive installations that examine the social, and political implications of landscape. Public Studio exhibits their work internationally and has garnered critical attention for their work receiving numerous commissions and awards. The Long Now, a monograph of Public Studio's work, edited by Emilie Chhangur and Philip Monk, was published in 2019. Elle Flanders is an artist and filmmaker. She completed her PhD at York University’s practice-based research visual arts program in 2014 and has mentored with some of the art world’s most notable artists, including Mary Kelly and Martha Rosler, at the Whitney ISP and Rutgers University, respectively. In addition to producing award-winning films and installations, Flanders has a strong history of political activism in the LGBTQ community and as a Jew working in solidarity with Palestinians to end the Occupation. Her longstanding interest in the socio-political realm and how it relates to landscape have led her, in collaboration with Tamira Sawatzky, to produce immersive, site-specific public art installations that re-examine the role of audience as participant/witness.
Tamira Sawatzky is an architect by training, having worked for the firm MJMA in Toronto from 1999–2010, designing large-scale, award-winning, community-based projects. Sawatzky began a collaborative art practice with Elle Flanders in 2009, bringing a spatial focus that contributes to the development of immersive installations and multifaceted exhibitions. Sawatzky’s architectural background lends itself to an emphasis on the structural, provoking a conversation between art and architecture and the politics of landscape and place.
