Oded Hirsch
The Lift, 2012
Mixed media installation
Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial


Hirsch’s work often appears as performed portraits of collective action and ritual that gives a sense of how we operate – together or as individuals – in our quest for fulfilment. He often stages situations that may at first appear to have no meaning or logic: but that through the context in which they appear, the behaviour of those involved, as the action unfolds, gradually become legible in unexpected ways.

Hirsch’s first public realm commission, The Lift, appears as an elevator bursting through the pristine and seductive shopping district of Liverpool ONE. The Lift immediately interferes with how the space is usually moved through, and points disconcertingly to the possibility of an unknown, subterranean place.


Oded Hirsch, b. 1976, Kibbutz Afikim, Israel, is an artist who lives and works in New York, U.S.A. Exhibitions include Nothing New (Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York, U.S.A., 2012), The Workers (MASS MoCA, Massachusets, U.S.A., 2011) and Family Files (Jewish Museum, Munich, Germany, 2010).