Artist Statement
My works address issues of gender, 'Mizrahik' and local identity, and are a result of my ongoing transition as a person between various roles: woman, mother, 'Mizrahik', 'Israeli'. My identity and my place within the family continuum have preoccupied me since a young age, and the camera serves as an autobiographical tool through which I examine reality.
I was born into an Iraqi traditional family, grew up in a southern neighborhood in the Krayot, with a disabled father and a housewife mother, and Since my early years, I absorbed prohibitions, the hiding of desires, and many regulations.
I was paved to be a "good woman", a mother, and a wife, but I refused to follow the path.
Art served as a refuge for me, where the "rebellion" took place.
As I grew older, the exploration of my identity and values as a person, as a woman, and as an artist always occurred in relation to this complex relationship and served as a driving force.
Over the past 15 years, I have photographed myself and my evolving family unit, expanding and contracting, within which I change my roles and functions.
I examine the power dynamics I have described through the camera, which allows me to express passion and strength, ask moral questions, and point out the cultural conditioning against which I stand.
The works for me are an expression of a hidden desire for external discipline that demands conquering the instinct, confining it within the aesthetic structures of the images, which are inaccessible and intangible. These are the objects of forbidden desire that must be suppressed, hidden, "Much like the impulse that must be conquered in order to be a good mother, a devoted woman, and an honorable daughter."
Sagit Zluf Namir, 2021
In 2020, "Sagit Zluf Namir received a commendation from the 'Association for the Study of Women’s Art and Gender'." According to the reasoning of the members of the judging committee: Ruti Director, Sandra Weil, Nir Hermet, Rola Khoury, Shiri Golan, Dr. Ketzia Alon, and Svetlana Ringold.
"Zluf Namir’s photographic language frequently touches on taboo areas, and she is not deterred from presenting visual images that are not 'easy to digest.' Hybrids of human and animal, foods resembling bleeding organs, intimate body parts, bodily fluids, and excretions – these are her daily bread. Yet, a protective veil of meticulous aestheticization wraps each image, with a sterilized, almost-medical quality that is not devoid of cruelty, transforming them into impressive artistic works."