Gaze of Orpheus 2022
 

The drawing series was exhibited at The 8th Biennale For Drawing In Israel ‘Traces VIII – More Than One’, Jerusalem Artist’s House, curated by Irith Hadar, November 2022- February 2023.

 

Through its seven pages, the drawing series 'The Gaze of Orpheus’, unfolds an encrypted text that now serves as a surface for a line drawing. The private code language formulated by Argov is based on Braille. The object of coding is a 24-page chapter entitled ‘Inspiration’ from Maurice Blanchot’s The Space Of Literature, in which the author describes the ‘literary space’, discussing the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and through it- writing, creation, inspiration, and death. Asserting that ‘writing begins with Orpheus’s gaze’, he points to the tension between the artist’s commitment to redeem the truth from its dark source and to his adherence to that part of the truth that cannot be illuminated. The desire to expose and express involves the need to conceal and keep a secret. The text coding allows Argov to compress and encrypt information and to formalize it as a visual space in which she presents an act of drawing.