Iris Sara Schiller Water from Above, Water from Below

Prix Maratier 2007

A childhood memory. I am interpreting inner scenes, moments remembered from childhood. Bodies take their place in a static choreography. My image-memory takes possession of these bodies, imposes their gestures, mutilates and alters them to make them significant to me.    
They are mute “extras” in a “staging” composed of apparently everyday furniture, plaster figures, found objects and light. 

An ancestral memory. Video projections resonate with the surrounding installation. They are image-memories belonging to an archetypal time.

The memory of the body. On small video screens, images show women.
Each woman tirelessly executes different repetitive actions. Their movements accentuate gestures inspired by everyday life that render the ascendency of memory over the real body palpable.

The three times mingle. Some elements perceived in the images on the large screens are seen again in the static “staging”, associating with it and referring to the gestures of the videos of time present.  

The intertwining of signs seems to help decipher a puzzle.” I.S.

Iris Sara Schiller was awarded the Prix Maratier in 2007. Born in Haifa in 1955, she studied at the Belazel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. She has lived in Paris for more than twenty years. Her work combines and associates sculpture, photography, video, drawings and texts.

Since its creation the Prix Maratier has been awarded to either painters or graphic artists. This is the first time that it has contributed to the realisation of a specific installation. This has enabled Iris Sara Schiller to continue work begun several years ago.   

A catalogue of the artist’s texts and drawings accompanies the installation.

The aim of the Fondation Pro-mahJ – heir to the Fondation Kikoïne and created on the initiative of Claire Maratier, the artist’s daughter, under the auspices of the Fondation du Judaïsme français – is to support the activities of the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme. Intent on recalling the interest in contemporary painters that she shared with her husband Amédé Maratier, Claire awards the Prix Maratier every two years and organises an exhibition of the artist’s work in the Kikoïne room in the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme.