Homage to Micha Ullman

Netta Dror’s body of video works is represented by a 2019 piece entitled An Homage to Micha Ullman (no. 15). Dror acts here both as performer and documentarist, as her camera records her sweeping the floor of thousands of ceramic shreds with a large street broom. A direct homage to Israeli conceptualist sculptor Micha Ullman’s Zen-like video sculptures from the 70’s, this video-performance also alludes to Josef Beuys’ iconic 1971 Aktion Ausfegen [Sweeping Up]. Dror’s video was performed in the gallery space of the Jaffa Museum, with its Ottoman arches echoing the arched rooms of the Höhmannhaus. After inviting visitors to smash hundreds of white porcelains, Dror swept the remains into a minimalist looking heap of razor-sharp fragments. Bridging Ullman’s pensive interior action and Beuys’ explicit public one, Dror’s work reverberates a theme prevalent throughout the show, one of loss and entropy that are fashioned into beauty.