Ilit Azoulay
138 x 92 cm
54 5/16 x 36 3/16 in
"ORIS opens the chest of memory, and time flows in all directions until past and future meet without barrier or hierarchy."
This work brings together objects and images spanning thousands of years of human history alongside contemporary technological and cosmic perspectives.
Among its elements appears a fragmentary portrait of the Egyptian pharaoh Senwosret III from the Middle Kingdom. Unlike the idealized royal images typical of Egyptian art, the ruler’s face here appears introspective and strikingly human.
Beside it appears a painted inscription from the pyramid temple of Amenemhat I, recalling the symbolic and ritual language through which ancient cultures articulated cosmic and spiritual order.
Additional objects, a stone snake head from Cyprus, a Roman glass bottle, and a fragment of a crucified Christ from the eighteenth century, carry with them layers of belief, everyday use, and cultural memory.
Within this sequence also appears an image of a computer chip, a complex system of microscopic circuits embodying the technological logic of our time, a new form of organizing knowledge and power.
Above them unfold two cosmic views: a young crescent moon at the beginning of its cycle, and a distant exoplanet, GJ 504 b, observed through advanced telescopes.
All these images meet here on a shared surface as a sequence of human attempts to read the world. Each offers a different way to give form to what lies beyond complete understanding: power, belief, time, and cosmos.
