When Your Art Can Travel to Your Exhibition but You Can't
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Loading... - Agnes Turkson
- 26 Sep 2022
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In June, the artist Lina Otom Jak Agolon took part in the group exhibition “The One World,” curated by Sandra Weil at the Parterre Gallery in Tel Aviv. She was able to attend the opening and see the three works she contributed to the show on display: a large embroidery of her home in South Sudan; a water jar that she crocheted using a technique similar to that of the women in her village and a mask inspired by her grandfather, who was the village headman.
The artist wasn’t able to attend the 2020 opening of “Ambiguity,” a group show in Sweden that included works by her. Otom Jak Agolon watched the opening on Zoom: While her artworks could fly abroad and return, as an asylum seeker without residency status she was unable to leave Israel.
Becoming an artist was never something that Otom Jak Agolon, 46 and married with four children, planned. Her artistic talent was revealed in a moment of crisis.
In 2002, when she was 26, she fled to Egypt from South Sudan with her husband and two children, fearing their lives were in danger. In 2007, when life became dangerous for asylum seekers in Egypt, they crossed the border into Israel. She began working as a cleaner in Tel Aviv, and her husband worked in a restaurant. They had two more children. Read More...
