Haim Maor

In a photograph from Haim Maor's film Circles (1975), a bound figure resembling a war prisoner appears surrounded by a circle - a basic form that is used in various rituals. Referring to this work, Maor has said he was interested in the gap between the actual representation of violence and pain and a conscious, intentional processes of aestheticization.

At the center of The Blindness Film (1978) is the story of Maor's grandfather, who lost his eyesight during the Holocaust. Maor, who as a child led his blind grandfather, performs various activities involving the use of the hands, such as reading Brail, moving a hand through water, and touching the face of a girl. The act of blind touch involves an act of seeing on the part of the viewer, and is related to a powerful collective theme.

The motif of blindness is also central to the performance Blind in Blue (1978), which took place in a kibbutz dining room. Maor appears next to a lit television set with his entire body painted blue, playing a guitar and wearing sunglasses like a blind beggar. The image of his body, which is reminiscent of the images of blind beggars from Picasso's Blue Period, is fused with the theme of blindness, which is related to the artist's biography. 

Born in Jaffa, 1951; lives and works in Kibbutz Giv'at Haim Meuchad

http://www.maorart.com/