Artist Lital Dotan dedicated most of the past decade to creating utopian environments for performance in the domestic sphere. Her Brooklyn-based Glasshouse ArtLifeLab, co-founded with Eyal Perry, is nourishing artists and audiences across generations and disciplines. She is the founder of Que sal mah, the newly launched concept boutique that merges performance, art and fashion. An immersive integration of installation, documentation and life, her performance narratives are designed to challenge structures and mechanisms across art and society, dissolving and re-imagining through harsh intimacy notions of space, audience, art, value and success.
LABA PROJECT:
One of the major projects I am currently working on is a translation of a performance piece into a full length play. Designed as a tragic comedy, the play is based on a performance I did during a residency at the Marina Abramovic Institute in San Francisco in 2010, which went tremendously wrong, causing me severe injuries by a participant. In the play I am focusing not on the personal traumatic aspect of the piece but rather on its social aspects. So far I have translated this performance into a draft for a play, and I hope to be able to develop and discuss it during the fellowship this year.
WORK SAMPLES:
Que sal mah (since 2015): Lital’s daily routine, translated into a one-to-one knot dressmaking service
Glasshouse ArtLifeLab (since 2007): Lital’s house as a living performance art environment, co-founded with Eyal Perry
What drew you to apply to LABA?
I am interested in the potential of a conversation around tradition and interpretation in a contemporary artistic context. It feels especially relevant as my current projects are rooted in texts.
Why do you want to study beauty?
I am interested in beauty as a lens to observe the human condition, seeking beauty not as a form but as a process of refinement. I feel such notions appear in many Jewish and traditional scriptures and I look forward to exploring them.