The Painter, 2015

 

Venues: ICA, London; Villa Stuck Museum, Munich; Former Foreign Correspondents Center, Athens.

 

Entitled 'The Painter' this installation is the first of five from a new body of work, The Sick Man of Europe. Guez's project reflects on the military history and current political climate of the Middle East through the creative practices of individual soldiers from the region.
The installation presents the story of a painter-turned-soldier, a Jewish Tunisian who immigrated to Israel. The 'painter' was conscripted to the Yom Kippur War as a reservist soldier in 1973 and, in recent years, has undergone psychiatric treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, part of which consists of repeatedly recording his memories of the war. These recordings are central to Guez's new work and relate directly to his artistic strategy of repetition and storytelling in re-evaluating accounts of the past.