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On Place and Space in Shirley Kaufman's 'Sanctum'

  • Eynel Wardi

Abstract:

 

The essay examines the relation between place and space in local art (in Israel) through a reading of Kaufman’s “Sanctum” and two environmental sculptures which it addresses, James Turrell’s Space That Sees (the Israel Museum) and Micha Ullman’s Sky (Tel-Hai Museum).  Drawing on Michel de Certeau’s concepts of “spatialization” and “cultural inhabitation,” among others, the essay traces Kaufman's attempt to clear an imaginative and psychic space beyond the constraints of the conflict-ridden place in which she lives and writes, i.e. Israel, and ultimately to find — or create —  her own place in it.

 

 

Eynel Wardi is a senior lecturer in the English Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the author of Once Below a Time:  Dylan Thomas, Julia Kristeva, and Other Speaking Subjects (2000), and of several articles on Gerard Manley Hopkins. Her current research interests are “inhabitable spaces" in literature and Ecopoetics.

updated in March 2019

 

Publisher's Version

Volume 2, issue 2 Topoi
Last updated on 04/18/2020