Avital Zemel

A white person wearing a red and white hoodie, black pants, and a black hat sits on top of a red couch. There is a NY giants and a Washington Capitals stanley cup champion plaque on the wall.
A Black person sits on a red couch leaning back with his head turned towards the viewer. He is wearing a navy Howard crewneck, a black belt with metal rings, and medium wash jeans. There is a blue patterned blanket draped over the couch and a book and skateboard sitting on top of the couch. A plant hangs in the upper left corner. A poster of four dasies hangs on the wall as well as a poster of two men kissing.
Two of the same person is in this painting. They are white and wearing a black shirt with green pants and red socks. The front half of their hair is dyed blond, the rest is brown. The foreground features a large scale version of them looking down to the right with their arm outstretched. The background features them laying down on a maroon couch surrounded by a crochet hook, yard, a pipe, a photo of their parents, a histology textbook, and a green wooden heart.
Lars atop a couch, acrylic on canvas 36×48, Self-Designed Home of Serenity, acrylic on canvas, 36×48, The Sleeper without grasp G.C., acrylic on canvas, 36×48
A Black person sits and faces the viewer. He wears a white shirt with a small detail of a red and blue circle on the right side. He is wearing green pants, a white undershirt, a purple earring, and a gold necklace. His hair is dyed purple. There are three photos on the wall of him in drag, his mom, and his best friend. There is also a clock on the wall and a plant coming from the top right.

Queer Black Jubilee with Mustafa, acrylic on canvas, 36×48

A white person wearing glasses sits on a red couch chair turned 3/4 towards the viewer. They are wearing a green and blue button down and have a green blanket draped over them. They are sitting under a dark window. There is a string of ivy coming from the left side. There is a page of music hanging up on the left side of the painting and a hand drawn birthday card on the top left.

Spud falls asleep, acrylic on canvas, 36×48

Artist Statement

Through large-scale acrylic paintings, I explore ways to map belonging with a focus on intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships. My paintings deal with themes of the self in the environment and the ways people curate their environments to reflect themselves. People adorn their spaces with material objects to feel comfortable and secure and as a way to construct their internal psyche in the world. My paintings examine this and showcase the differences in ways people represent themselves physically as a way to build spaces of belonging.

My work examines identity through spatial relationships and the ways that people try to access spaces that were not historically built for them. Much of my work revolves around queer identity. By centering these marginalized identities, I draw the viewers’ attention to them and highlight the sitters as themselves. Because the paintings take up a lot of physical space, the people in them do as well. The liminal background space is used as a way for the self to find autonomy as the space is built around the figure. I work collaboratively with my subject/s as a way to bring back agency that has been lost in the traditional painted muse trope. I conduct interviews with my subjects and through those interviews, I am able to emphasize different aspects of their personas in the works. 

My interviews led to the creation of a soundscape and a room installation. It is important that viewers are able to contextualize the figures in the paintings as real people and as people that are part of a larger shared community. The audio adds a layer of meaning to the people and gives them some authority in how they are portrayed. The room installation allows viewers to enter into a liminal space similar to the backgrounds of the paintings. In doing this, viewers can imagine their own homespace, what they might put in the room if it was theirs, how they might arrange it, etc. Through this imagination, subconscious or not, viewers think about the meaning of the construction of home and ways they build spaces to represent themselves.

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