Noa Giniger

Minimal and playful, Noa Giniger’s work is founded on the idea that nothing is stable, secure, or steady. As a consequence, a substantial part of her work relates to longing and the bittersweet of letting go. She investigates modes of navigation in this world, physical and emotional, inspired by systems of mapping and measurement, language and naming, natural laws and social codes. She explores the ways in which time and intimacy are linked, and addresses the difficulty of capturing intimacy with words. She uses different modes of collaboration and the ecosystem of the arts, creating occasions for collaborative practices and access. The outcomes of her projects include site-specific installations in both private and public space, sound, video, websites, objects, works on paper and writing. Additionally, Noa represents half of the spoken-word-poetry duo Noon & Ain with musician Anat Spiegel.

Noa Giniger graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris (2005) and attended the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University as an exchange student (2003-2004). She was a participant in the two-year program De Ateliers, Amsterdam (2006-2008), a Royal Dutch Institute Affiliated Fellow at the American Academy, Rome (2011) and recently, an artist in residence at Villa Empain – Fondation Boghossian, Brussels (2019). Noa is a recipient of the Stipendium for Established Artists from Mondriaan Funds (2018-2022) and Development Grant from Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst (AFK) (2016). Her work has been presented in various international solo and group exhibitions including ICA, Philadelphia; Western Front, Vancouver; Air de Paris, Paris; De Appel, Amsterdam; among others. Noa is also a board member at Tohu – an independent online art magazine dedicated to promoting clear and engaged writing about art and culture in Hebrew, Arabic, and English; and at puntWG – an artist-run experimental community and presentation space in Amsterdam.

Works

For The Time Being

Programmable LED Message Fan, 2011/2020

A words-based loading circle and the uploaded data itself. The first text-cycle displays: FOR THE TIME cycling clockwise. Then followed by the second text-cycle: BEING cycling counterclockwise. These two cycles repeat endlessly while also creating a current of air.
The Website www.forthetimebeing.be, launched on April 2020, allows viewers to intimately experience the work in their chosen location, correspondingly to the speed of their own internet.

photo capture:
Installation view during Chapter 3HREE, Het Hem, Zaandam, 2020 (Photographer: Cassander Eeftinck Schattenkerk)

HOMELAND ALONE, ALMOST

From the series SPELLS, ongoing

Spells is a text writing system that the artist developed based on the structure of stencil lettering: a ready-to-use plastic sheet consisting of the whole alphabet. It is part of an ongoing investigation into the possible representations of text as image.

photo capture:
View during Villa, open studio, Villa Empain – Fondation Boghossian, Brussels, 2019

Noon & Ain

Spoken word poetry, lifelong project With vocalist-composer Anat Spiegel

Noon & Ain explores feminine and existential topics through a personal, friendship-based dialogue. Together, the artist and composer create poems from their own digital chats and emails. As their functional communication turns into poetry, a non-linear alternative intimate narrative emerges, reshuffling art and the everyday. Through the years they have shifted between different composition methods: from the usage of Cut Up technique in our early poems to the more recent endeavor into Exquisite Cadaver.
The website www.noonandain.com displays their unusual creative process through texts, audio recordings, choreographed videos and a variety of behind-the-scenes material.

photo capture:
The artist’s and compser’s notebook, gluing moment, Paris, 2013

Get Lost Dreams

Graphite, two cotton pillowcases, bedding set, 2018, 55x65 cm each

“It’s easy to get lost in your own dreams”: this sentence is taken from the artist’s daily horoscope as it appeared on the online work Recalculating Route [www.recalculatingroute.info]. The text is traced in graphite onto two pillowcases, dividing any reading of the original sentence.

photo capture:
View during Cool Loneliness, Home, Amsterdam, 2018 (Photographer: Tamara Kuselman)

Compass

Four engraved metal plaques, chairs, 2018, 1.8x9 cm each plaque, 85x45x45 cm each chair

Situated in the artist’s living room, the round dining table and chairs act as an orientation apparatus; Compass. On the backs of each seat, on the wooden frame, a metal plaque indicates the name of the street located behind this chair. The work echoes the past and future circulation of such items as furniture – remnants of belonging, souvenirs.

photo capture:
View during Cool Loneliness, Home, Amsterdam, 2018 (Photographer: Tamara Kuselman)

Georgia

Hair, 2018, 25x17 cm

Georgia was formed and placed on the tiles of the artist’s bathroom, while the audience had only a restricted view of the work via the partially open door. This piece is a personal homage to Georgia O’Keeffe’s body of work and Marcel Duchamp’s Etant Donnés (1946-66).

photo capture:
View during Cool Loneliness, Home, Amsterdam, 2018 (Photographer: Tamara Kuselman)

What’s Yours is Mine

Two vintage chairs, cat’s nails, 2015 – 2020, 70x50x60 cm each chair

Two vintage chairs had been used by Mimi, the artist’s cat, to sharpen her claws. Despite the apparent vandalism they underwent, Giniger found herself being hypnotized by Mimi’s ongoing effort and the symmetrical result of her work: the soft upholstery has unraveled like two wings on both sides of each chair, while her nails got knitted in it as hidden pearls. In May 2020 the chairs left the artist’s home to participate in the exhibition Poeticizing Leisure at Gallery Hofland Althuis in Amsterdam. This has signalized the end of Mimi’s work; they have reached their final touch.photo capture:View during Cool Loneliness, Home, Amsterdam, 2018 (Photographer: Tamara Kuselman)

Both Sides Now (On Shuffle)

Engraved text on trees, 2015, variable dimensions and durations

Composed of eleven titles engraved on the bark of different trees around the park, the titles are taken from Joni Mitchell’s album “Both Sides Now”, which traces the arc of modern romantic relationship. The work also raises questions around marking and possessing landscape, while offering a poignant response to the often male- dominated tradition of Land Art.

photo capture:
You’ve Changed, view during Ephemeral Art in the Landscape, I-Park Foundation, Connecticut, 2015

The Sorrow the Joy Brings

2008-2013

The Sorrow the Joy Brings is a research based project rooted in a desire to make a weeping willow laugh by using manual means; to create an act that literally causes an existing tree to change its nature. The melancholic plant becomes the subject of this poetic intervention via a 35mm film, series of collages and a blog [http://the-sorrow-the-joy-brings.tumblr.com]

Instillation view from the exhibition Flowers of Our Land, The Israeli Centre for Digital Art, Holon

The Sorrow the Joy Brings

35mm film transferred to HD, sound, 5’57”, 2013

The film traces the attempt to uplift a weeping willow with the help of artificial wind, using industrial motion picture fans. The soundtrack is of the natural ambiance.

photo capture:
View during shooting day, Delta, British Delta, 2013