Speculative Beings and Unraveled Minds (solo) Martin De Souza-Dassault Art and Brain Gallery, Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (ELSC) Hebrew University, Curators: Dr. Michal Mor and Nili Vershov.
12.15.2025-15.3.2025
The exhibition presents two works by Orit Ben Shitrit, an Artist in Residence at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (ELSC) during the academic year 2025–26. These works are part of an ongoing research-based artistic process developing during her residency at the Center. Later in the year, Ben Shitrit will present additional works and a final exhibition through an ongoing dialogue and collaboration with Prof. Inbal Goshen and her laboratory.
Speculative Beings and Unraveled Minds explores the spaces in which technology, narrative, and the blurring of ontological boundaries between the human and the non-human reshape consciousness. It asks: What becomes of memory, identity, and desire when the categories familiar to us: human, machine, spirit, and animal, cease to exist as separate entities and merge into new hybrid beings?
The works on view stage a layered dialogue between static drawing and narrative video, between monochrome abstraction and saturated, carnivalesque imagery, and between meditative stillness and bursts of visual noise. This back-and-forth mirrors research itself, offering a speculative look at how encounters with the unknown shape knowledge and consciousness.
In a reality of constant digital connectivity, what remains of our inner freedom? The works suggest how parts of consciousness must connect, unravel, or even “go wild” to withstand the pressures of the present. They propose art as an “island” of intentional inefficiency—an enclave where transformation and play open a space for release.