Michal Heiman

Blood Test

In "Blood Test", Michal Heiman confronts the sociopolitical issues of her country, drawing upon news photography to make a powerful statement about the nature of violence in Israeli society. The artist assembled photographs of bloody body parts that she gathered from newspapers found in the national archives. She selected and brought these images together in a manner that is at once graphic and clinical.

Though the artist did not take the photographs herself, she manipulates them so that they lose their individual identity. The impersonal data provided by the chart at the upper part of "Blood Test" stresses the randomness and anonymity of the body parts, which could depict Israelis, Palestinians, or foreigners. Heiman confronts the arbitrary nature of terrorist violence, which has the potential to reduce its victims to faceless statistics.

Michal Heiman (born 1954) lives in Tel Aviv
"BloodTest", 2002 (Digital chromogenic print mounted on aluminium)
The Jewish Museum, New York; Purchase Sylvia Monaghan, 2003-28.1-3