Noa Sadka

Born in Tiberias, 1967
Lives and works in Tel Aviv

Noa Sadka's work An option for body, text, biographical diary, and reflexivity, as I've found there, in the work of 15 American artists relates to a long line of women artists who have interested, influenced, and impressed her in the course of her artistic career. As a teacher, she also shares their work with her students. Some of these artists are well known, while others are relatively marginal figures. They are all American women who embarked on their artistic careers in the 1960s or 1970s, a period marked by the burgeoning of feminist art. Their works are characterized by a focus on the body and on the use of photography and of texts; by performance-based actions; and by their conceptual quality. Ana Mendieta, for instance, photographed herself lying naked in nature, covered with leaves or earth; Lorna Simpson photographed black women whose back is turned towards the viewer, while their photographed bodies are overlain by a grid; in the late 1960s, Christine Kozlov spent several months documenting what she ate each day; Mary Kelly kept a diary documenting her first years as a mother; Barbara Kruger wrote texts that became slogans of the struggle against the oppression of women. Together, these artists created types of artworks that were unprecedented in terms of their female themes and their modes of expression and representation.