Victoria Hanna - Ke-Mi-Ah -ויקטוריה חנה - קמיעה , Art of Enchantment Eretz Israel Museum

[ënagualí~ᏉLAᗪἇ ኔጡ።]

Victoria Hanna - Ke-Mi-Ah -ויקטוריה חנה - קמיעה , Art of Enchantment Eretz Israel Museum

A living amulet, inviting us to a vocal session of magic taking place in our body. Based on the artist’s study of amulets, which she transforms into musical scores. As part of her ongoing research over the years, the vocal artist Victoria Hanna adapts materials from the world of Jewish mysticism, transforming them into experimental musical interpretations/expressions.

Her current work is a study of ancient Hebrew amulets in various collections both in Israel and abroad. From her perspective, an amulet is a physical space, a magical-textual mechanism with a specific order, goal and style that has survived for thousands of years into the present.

Using her voice, Victoria Hanna translates the two-dimensional amulet into a musical score. The amulet and magical text it contains are transmuted into a theatrical vocal structure.

They resuscitate a charged dialogue in the soul of the amulet’s writer, who calls upon the ancestors and upon different angels to come to his assistance, while conjuring up the names of demons and other entities and enjoining them to offer protection against the evils of the world.

In this work, the artist invites us to encounter the architecture of a locally produced 19th-century amulet, as well as the menorah )seven-branched candelabrum( and the hand encoded within it.

These ancient formal motifs in Jewish culture serve the artist as a visual and musical basis for deciphering the structure of the entire amulet, while using her voice to transmute the motifs and structure into sounds vibrating through the listener’s body.

Complementing the amulet is the artist’s face in action before the camera. The movements of her mouth and her facial orifices seek to provide a series of instructions for the participant in the work – a plea, or perhaps a heartfelt longing for a physical connection between the menorah appearing on the amulet and the artist’s living body.

examples of Hebrew amulets