In a Nutshell, 2020
Permanent Installation, Artport Artist Residency building, 8 Ha’amal Street, Tel Aviv
Fake coconut tree, steel, fiberglass, paint
As a fatigued symbol of simultaneously a rooted presence and absolute escapism, a palm tree has lost its muscle tone and is in a constant state of not standing up. In this work a heavily manipulated readymade constructed of steel and fiberglass is mounted to the building facade.
Commissioned by Artport Tel Aviv, curator: Vardit Gross
“A palm tree is the perfect, nearly hackneyed fantasy—from a coconut on a desert island to a poster in a teenage girl’s room, from artificial palm-shaped islands in Dubai to palms planted on traffic islands throughout Israel, extending across the Tel Aviv promenade, providing an imaginary, tropical touch to the Mediterranean shores. A tree with little shade, whose lifespan is around eighty years, like a human life, it stands upright until it no longer can, or until the palm weevil, a mysterious aphid, eats it from within, leaving our public space battered and strewn with the corpses of trees.
A tree stands outside the window of Yael Frank’s grandfather, an engineer by profession, who was never able to explain to his granddaughter how the thin trunk holds the entire weight at its crown. The circumstances of life made it stand, and those same circumstances also made it fall. The artificial palm repeatedly falling from the Artport roof continues Frank’s engagement with esoteric readymades, focusing on the absurdity of what we take for granted, and delving deeper into the symbolism of the palm tree, and its ongoing rupture. It is both funny and painful. Like a kid tickled so much that he appears to be laughing, while in fact he is crying, the palm on the Artport roof feels the burning tickle-pain in its lower abdomen, ultimately making it bend and collapse.
Frank sees the pain of objects—the humility of the tree collapsing under the burden and the fantasies which will remain unfulfilled; the suffering of the Pilates ball crushed under the gymnast’s legs; the dwindling tonus of supporting columns; the urge felt by IKEA cabinets to release their bones and extract their necks. She sees the pain, and pushes it a little further, until it becomes amusing, and then a little more, until it stops being funny.”
From curatorial text by Vardit Gross, director, Artport Tel Aviv for Nonfinito, 2020
Producer: Naama Haneman
Fabrication: Tucan