Me and Paul Klee Paint @ Anisa Ashkar. 2004

- ASHKAR Anisa, Me and Paul Klee Paint, 2004.

The photograph is documenting the final stage of a performance I made in 2004. The performance has taken place on a staircase leading to a library, and denotes the importance of a chosen location in understanding my works. As the performance degan, I tried to explain Art to a sparrow (Dror in Hebrew which means freedom). Later on I turned my attention to an old German book about Klee’s work. I tore out a few pages, ate them and drunk some milk. In the last part of the performance, depicted in the photograph, I washed the staircase with milk.

Explaining art to the Sparrow (a representation of freedom), after Beuys, is more then a tribute. It is a statement  on the connection between art and life, between the poetic and the politic aspects of being. By eating the pages of the book I tried to absorb history and knowledge dear to me, to make it a part of me, a constant remainder in my body, but at the same time I destroyed it in the process. Washing the staircases with milk is an act of erasure, cleaning the traces of the performance, erases the traces of thought. History as ended, what was will be.