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עמוד:10
Terminal__10 תערוכות + להטב"ק ___תל אביב Jacques Lacan, who continued Freud’s psychoanalytic tradition, alludes to the Oedipal stage, maintaining that when the two Freudian children compare body parts and discover the differences between them, society points at the girl and lets her know that she is missing something . Thus, he maintains, while the penis is the biological organ which some of us possess and others don’t, the phallus, which belongs in the realm of the imaginary, is what society signifies as missing in women . As part of the phallocentric - visual discourse, the phallus as a signifier of presence gives the male his status as a subject as well as the proactive ability to create . Raffi Dayagi is not interested in the mere creative symbolical power of the phallus . He strives to appropriate the process of pregnancy and birth giving into his male body . Over the years his works have addressed personal and social issues pertaining to his own gender and sexual identity as well as to the LGBTQ community in Israel . In the 2007 exhibition “Dragology” ( curator : Rachel Sukman ) , Dayagi sought the female facet of his male identity when he depicted 24 hours in the life of a drag queen . In 2017, in the exhibition “Provocative Art – Light + ” ( curator : Rachel Sukman ) , he presented a sculpture entitled Gemini : two winged men with pregnant bellies, and a baby sitting at their feet, still attached to one of them with an umbilical cord . In the current exhibition, “Pregnant Men,” Dayagi continues tackling the same theme, which became a burning issue for the local gay community in the past year—the question of giving birth / surrogacy for gay male couples— featuring men who carry before them a pregnant belly . The work process on these paintings included preparation of bellies in different stages of pregnancy, which were then mounted onto the bodies of gay male models . In the next phase, the men were photographed, and subsequently painted in Dayagi’s unique hyperrealistic style . Each of the paintings also introduces a “window” to the figures’ hopes and aspirations ; a “bubble” which is yet another layer in the story of pregnancy and birth : whether an Ultrasound of a fetus, the newborn, or a crystal ball for playing / fortunetelling . Dayagi’s works convey a yearning for pregnant female existence, and pain for the inability to bring a biological child into the world, a desire which is not necessarily exclusive to men or women, but rather a general human desire . Although recent years have seen reports of men who conceived babies and gave birth, these were transgender men ( who were born as biological females and their gender identity is masculine ) , who kept their reproductive organs and preserved their ability to give birth . Pregnancy in the body of a biological male has not yet occurred, and for the time being, such an option is a mere utopian assumption . The exhibition “Pregnant Men” thus introduces the yearning for gay couples to be able to make a family, and Dayagi’s paintings carry the signature and aspiration of a gay artist . ✦ Raffi Dayagi, Yaron How are Babies Made , 2014 Oil on canvas, 140 001× Photo : Raffi Dayagi רפי דייגי, ירון איך באים ילדים לעולם , 2014 שמן על בד, 001× 140 צילום : רפי דייגי
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