KORBAN
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In Hebrew, Korban means both a victim and a sacrificial offering. As a starting point for this project, I chose two biblical narratives that are paradigmatic of this concept: the binding of Isaac and the Pieta. The binding of Isaac is the story of Abraham challenged by God to sacrifice his only son, and the Pieta is the moment when Mary cradled Jesus’s body after his crucifixion.
In each photograph I assumed the role of a choreographer, prompting two male dancers to improvise based on a structure of fragmented gestures and expression I had envisioned for the scene. I used the stories Isaac and Jesus to provide an emotional map for the dancers as they portrayed their “roles” in the work. On an emotional level, capturing expressive moments of violence, grief, contemplation and distress, these images communicate an experience of trauma, echoing our contemporary disastrous climate. Inspired by the emotional intensity and depth in the work of artists such as Michelangelo and Caravaggio, I wished to universalize the present state of suffering.
