Age 2

Dalit Gurevich’s multimedia installation Age 2 features a photograph of the artist’s second birthday party but, as she says, “it could have been anyone’s” since all of the birthday celebrations at the kibbutz in the Negev where she grew up were interchangeable and the individuality of children was not emphasized. Gurevich replaces the drab image of herself with the little girl who she imagines her two-year-old self would have been had her individuality been encouraged to fully blossom. Using grand shocks of acrylic colors on top of a piece of plywood, she gives the child a frilly dress and “old lady” glasses (actually goggles), and a moon crescent of flowers in her hair. Her painted self practically leaps off the page while the party photograph recedes into the background—a symbol for memory’s imagined childhood stamping out the actual one.

Dalit Gurevich was born and raised in Israel. She works in her Williamsburg studio in Brooklyn, New York. Her art has appeared in 11211 Magazine, the Daily News and Terminal.