Yael Davids
Notation of Hands' Positions, 2007
Pencil on paper (drawing executed by Annelies M. Middel)
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Akinci, Amsterdam
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Yael Davids
End on Mouth, Interior Box A, 2007 c-print, courtesy the artist and Galerie Akinci, Amsterdam
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Yael Davids
(b 1968, Israel)

‘The work exists for a moment. Afterwards, what is left is a void, an absence, an object that ‘has been’’, Yael Davids has said. End on Mouth in absentia (2007) is an installation that brings together drawings, photography, texts and scores relating to her performance End on Mouth (2004). In the performance, she investigates the nature of theatre by proposing a different articulation of its constitutive elements, such as audience, stage, voice, text and choreographed gestures. Avoiding any direct representation of the live event, the installation instead gathers evidence and residue that allow us to imagine the performance that took place or the one that will happen next and, more  importantly, deals with the emptiness that follows the lived moment. The work explores ideas of theatre as both an architectural space and a communal experience, yet also shows an awareness of the very different context of an art gallery, with individual visitors rather than an audience.

This project has received the support of the Mondriaan Foundation