“They're saying That I am Not Really Me”—One of the recurring features pf Roee Rosen's works over the years has been the provocative, expansive and often disorienting way his work undoes notions of identity, and reconstructs new ones through hybrids of the fictional and the documentary, the erotic and the political, the painful and the humorous. This artist talk will present several of these projects, with a particular emphasis on notions of Jewish identity, from the early artist book The Blind Merchant (1989-1991), a retelling of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, to the scandalous scenario of Live and Die as Eva Braun (1995-1997), the provocative universe of the fictive artist Justine Frank (1900-1943), to recent engagements with the staple Jewish identities of the 20th Century: Sigmund Freud (the artist book The Standard Edition, 2024), and Franz Kafka (the Feature musical comedy Kafka for Kids, 2022).
Roee Rosen (b. 1963) is an Israeli-American artist, filmmaker and writer. He is known for his multilayered and provocative work which often challenges the divides between history and the present, documentary and fiction, politics and erotics. Expansive one person exhibitions of his works were shown worldwide, among others at Extra-City, Antwerp (2009), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2018), Kunstmuseum Luzern (2022), and Kunstverein Hannover (2024). Rosen is a professor at Ha'Midrasha Faculty of the Arts, Beit Berl College, in Israel.