Queendom–مَلِكوت–מַלְכּוּת

Narratives of a New Order - Israeli Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale

Ilit Azoulay (b. Tel Aviv-Jaffa 1972, lives and works in Berlin) is known for her photographic tableaus, which are composed of everyday objects, architectural fragments and artifacts in the manner of collages. In her current project she continues her unique method of taking apart and reassembling unregarded objects and their stories through macro-lens photography. In 2022 she will contribute to the Israeli Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. By means of large-scale panoramic photomontages, a collaborative sound installation and architectural interventions Azoulay transitions the Pavilion from euro-centric modernity to Middle Eastern contemporaneity. Based on forgotten archival research materials on medieval inlaid vessels of Islamic art, the question of ownership over images and of cultural appropriation takes center stage. The Queendom—a story of transformations— has risen out of an all-encompassing system crash, resulting from a malfunction of existing power structures, flooding out of the digital realm, and spilling a new order of data into reality.

The artist picks up on this upheaval in a 360° publication, which expands on the exhibition and has neither a definite beginning nor an end. Azoulay's photomontages function as cartographies to the Queendom and focal points of the publication. The accumulative and polyphonic methodology of the book, with contributions by Naomi Alderman, Timo Feldhaus, Tehila Hakimi, Hanin Hannouch, Shelley Harten, Sheikha Hlewa, Adi Keissar, Lali Tsipi Michaeli, Vicki Shiran and Anat Zecharia, mirrors the Queendom's capacity as a rhizomatic space of knowledge production, where stories and histories merge.