Yael Sloma

2021-2023

Linocut print series

30x40 cm each

Observing the series of linocuts Danse Macabre (After Holbein) resembles scrolling through a newsfeed or peeking through windows into intimate living spaces. Danse Macabre (the Dance of Death) is also the title of a series of woodcuts created by Hans Holbein the Younger between 1523 and 1526. Holbein's forty-one woodcuts describe the universality of death in a realistic, symbolic, and allegorical language, through portraits depicting members of various trades and classes. Sloma follows suit. After a comprehensive gathering operation on the web, during which she mapped, coded, and culled information on consumption habits and lifestyles, she compiled a catalogue of designed objects found in domestic settings, presenting a series of spaces and figures with archetypal features: a young woman practicing yoga in her living room; a teenager masturbating in his room; a couple of millennials in an urban loft; a man leaning on a kitchen island; a girl filming herself for TikTok. The figures are immersed in screens and worship electrical appliances and brand names. The monochromatic compositions, the distorted perspective, the visual congestion, and lack of differentiation between the figures and the spaces they occupy, evoke a sense of threat.

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Tali Ben-Nun