Over Excess
Vitrina Gallery / Curator Michal Hasson Glizer
The exhibition offers a poetic and philosophical inquiry into the notion of otherness within the digital age. Ronit Mirsky translates the disrupted genetic code of her son Joni, who has Down syndrome, into an artistic language. By doing so, she challenges the binary logic of algorithms and codes, exposing the aesthetic potential that arises precisely from deviation and anomaly.
The installation traces back to the origins of binary code in the early 19th century. At its center stands a hand-operated knitting machine, activated by punch cards perforated according to the translated genetic sequence. These extended cards generate thousands of knitted rows, accumulating into a textile nearly ten meters long—an embodied poem of error.
Alongside the knitting machine, dozens of prints are displayed: engraved plates punctured with fragments of the genetic code. Their appearance evokes lottery tickets, as if the artist’s act of perforation might determine who “draws” a normative chromosomal set and who does not. A third work in the exhibition is a dual-channel video presenting a music box that translates Joni’s heartbeat—recorded via his ECG—into a dissonant melody.
Click here for a review by Avshalom Halutz in Haaretz
