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Sarai studied at art schools. She received formal training in painting, digital photography, sculpture, drawing, music and performing art.
At the age of 17 she started traveling the world, ultimately basing herself in New York at the age of 20. In New York Givaty exhibited three group shows and one solo show. Simultaneously, she continued her education at the School of Visual Art and the Herbert Berghof Studio of Performing Art. After two and half years in New York, she returned to Israel and ended up establishing a TV career.
Now back in the States, Givaty lives between Los Angeles, New York and Israel where she continually produces fine art and informs her bilateral worldview. Determined to evolve and develop her oeuvre, she experiments with mixed media incorporating painting, photography, video art and music into her new work. Becoming perpetually more provocative and dynamic, demand for Givaty’s work continues to grow worldwide.
Growing up in war torn Israel has had a powerful impact on Givaty, whose work masterfully interrogates the issues of contemporary warfare, international security, privacy and human rights. In a stunning, hyperrealist mix media series called 18, Givaty explores the beautiful but haunting vulnerability of female Israeli soldiers and the controversial notion of mandatory conscription. Her last solo show, Privacy, features luxuriantly colored images of security x-rayed luggage cradling female bodies in the fetal position. This boldly graphic yet uncannily expressive work is peppered with an amalgam of personal objects, military objects, medicinal objects, and fashion objects: all undeniable accoutrements of the late-capitalist information age. These images, so innocently magnificent yet so unsettling, appear as if even the mother’s womb has been reduced to the scrutiny of international security measures. Givaty’s images are radiant, Orwellian tapestries that, as Clement Greenburg once suggested, indicate that we have been desensitized by the bombardment of an alluring, plastic aesthetic. Givaty forces the viewer to consider this dichotomy between beauty and horror. Furthermore, accentuating the inextricable link between U.S. policy and the state of the Middle East, Givaty’s work insinuates that the war on civil rights has gone far beyond the war torn regions of the Middle East and is now a global conflict.
Statement
Privacy
¨Growing up in Israel, a country threatened by war and terror, tight security is an every day matter; therefore invasion to our privacy is necessary. Staring at security monitors I was fascinated with people’s belongings being revealed and taken away from them. I decided to put in my imaginary bags the craziest and most outrages items, verging on the surreal. Our bags are part of who we are and tell our life story. I used my sisters and friends as models and the images you see are digital photographs printed on canvas¨.
Eighteen
¨I grew up in Israel, a country threatened by war and terror, and joining the army is mandatory, 2 years for women and 3 for men. Having never served in the army myself due to health problems, whilst having everybody else around me including my young sisters join the army, I was intrigued by the situation I found my sisters and childhood friends in. During a visit to an army base, secretly taking pictures of personal moments of those young female soldiers, only 18 years old, looking fragile and innocent, I could only imagine how they supported each other during this intense experience. They looked like warriors to me. Using photography to represent the real and paint to express my fantasy, I developed a series based on this trip¨.
Press Release
Since September 11th, national security issues have been assaulting our privacy while exposing not only our personal effects but also endangering our humanity and freedom. Sarai, with her “Privacy Series”, has been investigating more unconcealed facets of privacy. The irony of her vision combines provocation with every day reality. Sarai merges the stark duality of seductive secret personal items with unpredictable, almost surreal mundane images, which may very well be found in one’s suitcase or luggage. Her uncanny X-ray of contrasting personal private belongings unveils the public facade draped over our most confidential secrets, forsaking freedom with a public invasion by trained intruders, leaving us questioning our covenant with privacy.
