Venice Biennale: Artist Tsibi Geva Covers Israeli Pavilion in Used Tires

Israeli artist Tsibi Geva has created a site-specific installation at this year’s Venice Biennale, in which cladding consisting of used car tires covers the exterior walls of the Israeli pavilion. Called Archaelogy of the Present, the installation focuses on Geva’s enduring concern with the notion of ‘home,’ and includes disparate elements—window shutters, cement blocks, tiles, found objects—that invoke ideas of home and personal identity. To that end, “The used tires, which are impregnated with a distinct odor, form an organized network of holes imbued with a protective potential, while simultaneously attesting to a state of danger, constituting a powerful material presence, and communicating a charged, urgent visual and political statement,” according to the Biennale committee’s statement. They might have added that Geva’s used tires also happen to be an inspired and unexpectedly beautiful architectural device.

Via Dezeen