Irit Batsry (

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

: אירית בצרי; born 1957) is an Israeli-American visual and installation artist.

Biography

Batsry graduated from the

Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design () is a public college of design and art located in Jerusalem. Established in 1906 by Jewish painter and sculptor Boris Schatz, Bezalel is Israel's oldest institution of higher education and is considered the ...

in fine art in 1982. She moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

, and became an instructor and on-line editor for ''Film/Video Arts''. Through her career she has produced experimental videos and installations that have been shown around the world including the

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...

in Washington D.C., The

Biosphere The biosphere (), also called the ecosphere (), is the worldwide sum of all ecosystems. It can also be termed the zone of life on the Earth. The biosphere (which is technically a spherical shell) is virtually a closed system with regard to mat ...

in Montreal, the Musee de Arte in Rio de Janeiro and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid. Her work is in the collections of The

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, and The

Whitney Museum The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

of American Art, among others. Batsry has received numerous awards, notably the Bucksbaum Award for her work shown at the Whitney Museum's Biennial Exhibition in 2002. She has lived and worked in New York since 1983. Batsry's work displays ephemeral transitory images that are difficult to process rationally. Her interest in the notion of perception became more pronounced in the early 1990s when she studied the work of

Buckminster Fuller Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more t ...

, in particular his vision disorder that caused a near constant blurring of images. She produced several works inspired by Fuller including "A Simple Case of Vision" and "Of Persistence of Absence." Each examined the idea of distortion and perception through video and space.

Awards

*2002

Bucksbaum Award The Bucksbaum Award was established in 2000 by the Bucksbaum Family Foundation and the Whitney Museum of American Art. It is awarded biannually "to honor an artist, living and working in the United States, whose work demonstrates a singular combinat ...

*1992

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

*1996, 2001 Grand Prix Video de Création of the Société Civile des Auteurs Multimedia, Paris *New York Fine Arts Foundation Fellow *Jerome Foundation Fellow *1990, 1995 Grand Prix at Locarno *1994, 2001 First Prize at Vigo International Video Festival *1991 Best International Artistic Contribution at Cadiz *1989 First Prize at the Australian Video Festival *1989 First prize at the San Francisco Poetry Film Festival

Works

* "Slightly less than a saint" (1982) * trilogy "Passage to utopia" ** "Stories from the old ruin" (1986), VHS. ** "Leaving the old ruin" (1989) ** "Traces of a presence to come" (1993), VHS. * "Of persistence of absence" (1991) * "A Simple Case of vision"(1991) * "These Are Not my Images (neither there nor here)" (2000), VHS. * "Beach at Nightfall", 2009

References

External links

Artist's website
''Artnet'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Batsry, Irit 1957 births Living people 20th-century American women artists American video artists Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design alumni Israeli expatriates in the United States Jewish Israeli artists People from Ramat Gan American women installation artists