Innovative Jeni Caruana paintings acquired by top Israeli international performers
Malta resident, British artist and tutor Jeni Caruana, has provided a number of paintings to international dance performers Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor, who were in Malta on the first leg of their global tour that takes them to New York, Paris and China to perform their latest piece ‘Two Room Apartment’ which made its European debut during the Malta Arts Festival at the Phoenicia Hotel Grand Ballroom venue. Ms Caruana selected to capture the Israeli dancers with a live painting given her professional interest as a painter in the nude form which is part of the complexity of this performance.
Ms Caruana’s paintings from the two performances ensure that this ground-breaking avantgardé dance has been concretised for posterity, living on in the beautiful canvases rather than in just the minds of the audience or the bodies of the performers, and will no doubt enjoy great appeal amongst art collectors as well as collectors of rare Melitensia.
Titled ‘Nudes in Motion’ Ms Caruana’s paintings compliment the event’s theme by celebrating key moments during the dance performance when the two professional dancers create intimate moments with the audience. Physically-demanding and requiring high-energy the “Two Room Apartment“dance choreography is characterised by synchronicity and repetition of movement, suggestive and provocative body movements, and the dancers’ manipulation and lifting of their collective identity as a couple. Acrobatic and full of energy and grace, both Niv and Oren are regarded by thier contemporaries as “the incarnation of modern Israeli urban dance.”
Ms Caruana is hoping that her paintings will add another dimension to the performance experience for Niv and Oren, as she feels strongly about the sta- tus of performance art and its role in our society. Mr. Sheinfeld and Mr. Laor said that they would be hanging the paintings in their apartment in Tel Aviv, the spiritual home of ‘Two Room Apartment’, as a reminder of this European debut in Malta.
Many of Jeni Caruana’s paintings are painted live, such as Jeni’s jazz paintings, which, like the paintings for “Two Room Apartment”, are originals composed in the moment as the event unfolds and not working from photos or sketches. The works are therefore immediate impressions created on the spot, which is what lends the paintings a unique and distinctive character. A jazz painting exhibition by Jeni Caruana runs to July 24 at Phoenicia’s Palm Court during the Malta Jazz Festival.