Gil & Moti
Totally Devoted To You

In their multimedia work the artist duo Gil & Moti negate the existence of boundaries separating life and art, and performance and social intervention. As Jewish Israelis and homosexual immigrants living in Rotterdam, they contribute to discourses about being different and about sets of rules that are supposed to regulate social existence.

The Lentos is the last of five venues for Totally Devoted To You, an exhibition on an international tour. After Kunsthallen Nikolaj/​Copenhagen, Stavanger Kunstmuseum, Kunstmuseum Bochum and Tensta Konsthall/​Stockholm the Lentos now offers an overview of the duo’s oeuvre.

In Available for You (2008−2011 ) Gil & Moti put themselves at the disposal of Arab immigrants in Rotterdam and Copenhagen to address the conflicted relationship between Israelis and Palestinians in Israel. Videos resembling diary entries document these encounters. Israel is also at the centre of the installation Dreamers and Storytellers (2011). Using as tools for their analysis paintings, etchings and texts featuring their dreams, Gil & Moti focus on the socio-political problems of their native country.

Dating Gil & Moti (2003−2008) documents the result of their search for friends among gay Arab men. Since restrictive legislation in their native countries makes it impossible for these men to live their sexuality openly, they are forced to go abroad. This Internet project resulted in more than 100 friendships and a love relationship with a man from Lebanon.

The video and multimedia work Laylah the Creature Beyond Dreams (2004) enables the artists to portray this love relationship, which is unusual at least in its genesis.The earliest work by Gil & Moti presented at the Lentos is considered not only a great success in terms of the artistic career of the artist duo, but also in terms of the possibility for gay and lesbian people to get married.

In The Gil & Moti Wedding Project (2001) the artists turn their wedding into an art project. Gil & Moti were among the first homosexuals to avail themselves of the then newly passed Dutch marriage legislation, which made same sex marriage legal, and got married in Rotterdam. The bed of their honeymoon, which they spent in Rotterdam’s Town Hall, is on display at the Lentos as is the video documentation of the performance. A local project complements Gil & Motis exhibition wherever it stops off on its tour. For Colored Swans (2012), the project that will be taking shape during the artists’ stay in Linz, Gil & Moti will be interacting with ​“stylish and outstanding youngsters (such as Emo and Visual Kei)”, as they themselves put it. The different stages of the project and its final results will be constantly on display alongside the exhibition.

Gil, born 1968 in Rishon Lezion/​Israel and Moti, born 1971 in Ramat Gan/​Israel

Live and work together since 1994, since 1998 in Rotterdam.

Project Manager: Nina Kirsch