ISPADA Israeli Planning, Architecture and Development in Africa
Yigal Nizri, Israeli artist, born 1973
Tiger, 2001
Polyester, wool and lycra, 200 x 250 cm
Tiger, a work of art by Yigal Nizri, sheds light on the relevance of the "African object" to the Mizrahi context in Israel. It is made of a blanket Nizri used as a child, bearing a print of a tiger in the jungle. Nizri's Tiger alludes to the African geography and the migration of "exotic", "authentic" African objects to Western collectors' homes, as discussed in the former chapter. However, it is difficult to observe the 'Tiger' without associating it with the synonymous 'panther', along with its symbolical resistance. Borrowing their name from the Afro-American movement, the Israeli ‘Black Panthers’ movement represented a rejectionist front – no more lambs to the slaughter as their parents were, but the agents of a biting protest.
From: Haim Yaacobi, Israel and Africa- A genealogy of moral geography, Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Geography, 2015.
Tiger, 2001
Polyester, wool and lycra, 200 x 250 cm
Tiger, a work of art by Yigal Nizri, sheds light on the relevance of the "African object" to the Mizrahi context in Israel. It is made of a blanket Nizri used as a child, bearing a print of a tiger in the jungle. Nizri's Tiger alludes to the African geography and the migration of "exotic", "authentic" African objects to Western collectors' homes, as discussed in the former chapter. However, it is difficult to observe the 'Tiger' without associating it with the synonymous 'panther', along with its symbolical resistance. Borrowing their name from the Afro-American movement, the Israeli ‘Black Panthers’ movement represented a rejectionist front – no more lambs to the slaughter as their parents were, but the agents of a biting protest.
From: Haim Yaacobi, Israel and Africa- A genealogy of moral geography, Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Geography, 2015.
