Rachel Gutgarts holds a degree from the Animation Department of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, where she specialized in experimental techniques, focusing on animated silkscreens.
In 2017, she completed her graduation project, a film titled “A Love Letter to the One I Made Up,” which was widely screened at numerous film and animation festivals worldwide. She has also collaborated on various projects with several independent artist studios, both in Israel and Europe.
Currently, she works as an animator, editor, and independent designer, while continuing her work in experimental documentary filmmaking. She joined the National Studio of Contemporary Arts Le Fresnoy in 2023 (Vera Molnár class).
Her practice consists of printing animated frames in various analog techniques such as silver gelatin print, cyanotype, and silk screen print. She draws inspiration from the history of photography and early photographic techniques alongside Soviet design in an attempt to combine such aesthetics with documentary practices. At the intersection of various influences and experiments, Rachel Gutgarts’ work, with its stylistic fragmentation, reflects the fragmentation of Israeli society, from which the filmmaker originates.
Read his interview by Dylan Librati for the Format Court website (french)
En 2024, she was laureat of the Pepinières Emergences Videos prize during the International Video Competition at the 2024 Videoformes festival for her work “Via Dolorosa,” created in 2023.
Via Dolorosa, Rachel Gutgarts, 2023, Israël – France
The simple modeling and diverse camera work make the work elegant and personal.
A halo is placed over the head of urban youth, reminiscent of a religious painting. The value of the sacred and the profane is inverted here. This work succeeds in expressing, through the artist’s realistic experience, the period of adolescence where there is no hope for a future and nowhere to go.
“Everything blends together, and when someone recalls the memory of a place, the viewer is plunged into the nightlife of Jerusalem from a few years ago. Memory envelops us, and we are carried away by the narrator’s incorrect poetry, like when she urinates in the streets of Jerusalem and our eyes reach under her skirt, where her vagina gradually transforms into a medallion representing the Virgin Mary and her son…”
Read the full review by Amel Argoud on the Format Court website (french)
VIDEOFORMES (Fr)
Trend Observatory, laboratory, producer, and disseminator of emerging art forms in which digital technologies and poetry shape possible worlds, VIDEOFORMES organizes an annual international festival of hybrid and digital arts in Clermont-Ferrand and reports on the effervescence of multifaceted creations: installations, videos, performances, virtual realities...
Within the event, dynamic encounters with various professionals are open as part of the Digital Acts and address artistic, cultural, and societal themes.
Since 1986, the year of the first festival, VIDEOFORMES has attracted the greatest names in video art and digital arts: Nam June Paik, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Ed Emschwiller, Robert Cahen, Bill Viola, Gary Hill, John Sanborn, Jacques-Louis and Danielle Nyst, Michel Jaffrenou, Klaus vom Bruch, Bruce Nauman, Thierry Kuntzel, Studio Azzurro, Juan Downey, Ko Nakajima, Gianni Toti, Reynold Reynolds, Catherine Ikam, Alain Fleischer, Tania Mouraud, Grégory Chatonsky, Miguel Chevalier...
In the same spirit of disseminating innovative art, VIDEOFORMES welcomes many young artists and has presented the first works of artists such as Pierrick Sorin, Rosangela Renno, Lucas Bambozzi, Golnaz Behrouznia, Mihai Grecu, Hee Won Lee, Momoko Seto, Benjamin Nuel, Philipp Artus, Gabriel Mascaro, Fanny Bauguil, Samuel Rousseau, Boris Labbé...
VIDEOFORMES hosts artists in residence every year, participates in national and international cultural events, offers a program of multidisciplinary experimental performances (VIDEOBARS), a digital magazine (Turbulences Vidéo | Digital and Hybrid Arts), digital archives, and a program of actions in Artistic and Cultural Education.
