Dafna Talmon
Artist&Photographer 

MIC – Made in China

Curator Hagar Raban

 

The MIC – Made In China exhibition invites visitors to take a look behind the scenes of consumer culture, and take an active part in it, in contrast to the role that they are accustomed to – that is, not as end consumers, but as production-line workers. As we enter the exhibition–factory, we are required to deposit our belongings on racks at the designated spots, put on gloves and wrap our shoes in special coverings. We are then presented with an orientation map, showing our current location in the factory space, as well as its various sections and the path one must take between them. As we make our way along the route – which is clearly demarcated and marked on the gallery floor – we eventually reach the “Training Room,” where we are asked to watch a short tutorial video, which introduces us to the main processes and principles of the factory’s principal function: gift wrapping. Later, we are asked to apply what we have learned: to choose an object from the “raw materials” that are piled up “in bulk” in the operational area, wrap it up as instructed, and put it away in a branded box of the factory, which bears a yellow and luminous sticker with the logo MIC – Made in China.

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The multidisciplinary artist Dafna Talmon often combines photography, installation, video, and performance in her works. Since graduating from Hamidrasha School of Art, Beit Berl in 2018, she has been creating community-based projects that engage with the themes of home, freedom, consumer culture, the notion of abundance, and relationships – between people, and between them and their belongings. She is best known for her flagship work, The Gift Project, which comprises her personal encounters with people seeking to get rid of old objects – which she turns into gifts that are handed out to others. Talmon has been refining and developing this project over the past two years, and each time it takes a surprising and new turn: documenting either the objects, or the people who are parting with them; at times combined with video works; and on one occasion even crossing the entire country as she visited various communities from north to south, as part of an ongoing performance titled The Gift Car Journey.

 

In the present exhibition at City Gallery Kfar Saba, the artist is changing course, in a bid to reveal to us how goods are produced. The name of the exhibition – Made in China - is both a concrete description and a well-known mark that appears on various consumer products made in China. Because factories in the Far East in general, and China in particular, operate under very different standards and regulations than those of most Western countries, the term Made in China is linked in our Western cultural consciousness to mass production of cheap and unreliable products of poor quality, and occasionally even a health hazard, due to toxic substances or unsafe components. In addition, the label also bears a loaded connotation with regard to the human aspect of the production process: in these factories in East Asia – which are also known as “sweatshops” – working conditions are deplorable and exploitative. Their workers (who, in some cases, are children) are often denied social rights, paid a pittance, and work long hours, in some instances at risk of their health.

 

Under this title, Talmon turns the gallery into a factory for the production and wrapping of gifts, whose raw materials are various objects that people have sought to get rid of or part from. To this end, she has established a large-scale collaboration with the Sustainability and Innovation Department; the Kipod Center for Sustainability; and the Community Department at the Kfar Saba Municipality. With them, as a participatory performative  action, she has set out to collect from the city residents all the items that they no longer need – clothes, books, ornamental objects, toys, and so forth – to be “optimally and expertly” gift-wrapped (as we have learned from the tutorial). These objects can be found in the gallery space in the “Operational Area – Raw Material” section, where they are placed in a large pile, to be diminished over time.

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In this way, by visiting the gallery consumerism is replaced by productivity. At first blush, this is an active, positive, and constructive thing to do, yet the “production” that Talmon enables us to take part in is actually useless, as it is nothing more than a generic wrapping of existing objects, with the minimal means at our disposal: brown wrapping paper, a pair of scissors, and a tape dispenser. Through this tongue-in-cheek, humorous take on production, Talmon seeks to hold up a mirror to us that makes us scrutinize our relationship with all these objects: As individuals and as a society, can we exist with fewer objects, or less consumption? Given that our homes manage to continue to exist without all those objects that we once thought we needed, did we really need them in the first place? Can one person’s garbage become another person’s treasure? And above all, are we capable of defining ourselves without reference to our possessions? Will we ever be able to break free from them?

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Catalog

Photos by Dafna Talmon and Tal Nissim