Are you ok? What are you doing to stay sane & ride out the quarantine?
I'm OK! Balancing teaching my classes at MCAD and homeschooling my children has been an adjustment... but I really do enjoy slowing down and taking the sunny days in as much as possible.
Best art show you’ve seen this past decade and where?
In 2015-16 I lived in Berlin for a year working on a series of paintings related to the meaning of home. I saw the South African William Kentridge exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau museum. Kentridge's work is of great influence on me and I was so immersed in the experience of his moving images and drawings provided at the show.
What has been the high point of your career? Lowest?
Giving birth to my eldest child was a transformative point in my life. It changed me both physically and emotionally. At that time I felt motherhood was taking me away from my painting and creative practice. I was putting a lot of energy into caring for this little creature! One day when my child was about 2 she was drawing shapes with crayons and I decided to casually join her and color in her shapes. This action felt liberating and freeing on multiple levels. We continued this activity and produced a whole body of work that was later exhibited in a gallery.
What are you working on right now? What’s coming up for you on the calendar for the future? Anything you want to plug?
Questions about "home" and identity are recurring themes in my work. Movement between homes and life-changing events have shaped my path of inquiry. Could ideology and political shifts change one's meaning for what they call home? Could one “undo” a home? I ask whether it is necessary for me to reconcile social conflicts in order to call a place home while considering the repercussions for my children. Experiencing this lockdown has moved the focus to a specific location and place called home, here and now.
What is your porn star name? (First pet, mothers maiden name)
Tuli Segal
Avigail Manneberg is a Minneapolis-based artist. She works in varied media, such as painting, drawing, video, and performance. Her most recent body of work is in direct response to the chaos experienced by those fleeing conflict. “At a time of continual flux, my art grapples with national and cultural identity through the case study of my own history in relation to my home country of Israel.” Avigail received her Bachelor in Design from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem in 2006 and her MFA from the University of Minnesota in 2012. Since then she has been teaching studio arts at the University of Minnesota and at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She lived in Berlin in 2009, 2015 and 2017 supported by DAAD, (German Academic Exchange Service) fellowships, where she studied at the University of the Arts (UdK). She has exhibited her work at galleries, universities and museums in the USA and internationally, including in Finland, Berlin, Cyprus, Beijing and Israel. Avigail is the recipient of 2018 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Visual Arts grant the University of Minnesota's 2018 Human Rights Initiative Grant for the project, A Contested Home: Memory, Commemoration and Rights around Forced Migration of Palestinians in the Galilee. https://www.avigail-manneberg.com/