Currents 119 solo exhibition St Louis Art Museum
Israeli artist Dana Levy is known for poetic video, sculpture, and print installations that explore place, displacement, and migration by exposing the tensions among architecture, nature, the environment, and human history. In Currents 119: Dana Levy, the artist presents three new works concerned with landscape and memory.
Throughout her dreamy, surreal videos, Levy examines how the past resides in the present and how the choices we make—what to keep and what is destroyed—hold important implications. Levy is interested in how humans interact with historic architecture and see or feel the traces of history within buildings. Her multifaceted practice considers how historic architecture and sites embody lived experiences and change context over time. She often begins her projects with specific buildings, local people, and archives to create works that delve into unique cultural histories and connect to overarching themes of place.
Levy’s work moves beyond a traditional video format by seamlessly integrating moving images and projections with found images and objects, subverting their original functions and meanings to create new narratives. For this exhibition, she worked closely with members of the St. Louis community, from city residents to historians and cultural institutions. While the artworks in the exhibition start with St. Louis and its history, the city stands as an archetype for American urban centers.
Levy is the recipient of the 2019–2020 Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Fellowship, which includes a residency at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis and a Currents exhibition at the Museum. The Museum’s Currents series is dedicated to the ongoing presentation of new works of contemporary art by living artists. Levy’s video work The Weight of Things, 2015–2019, will be on view concurrently as part of New Media Series—Dana Levy in Gallery 301.
Currents 119: Dana Levy is curated by Hannah Klemm, associate curator of modern and contemporary art, and Molly Moog, research assistant. The exhibition is supported in part by the Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Endowment Fund. The artist’s creation of works in the exhibition was supported by a grant from Artis.
