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Nelly Agassi, an Israeli video and performance artist, was born in 1973 in Israel. In 2003 she was awarded the Nathan Gottesdiener Prize for a Young Israeli Artist.
Agassi is the daughter of the artist and art critic Meir Agassi and the photographer Ruth Agassi.
Agassi's work uses the body as a central tool for artistic expression. Her earlier works test the boundaries of the body. In works such as the performance art and installation "No Stepping Outside the Lines and No Touching the Floor" (1999), Agassi made use of red string, which examined the relationship between the female body and the environment. Similar relationship also appears in works such as "Dress Wall" (2002) or "Borrowed Scenery" (2004), in which a dress made in a slow and Sisyphean process becomes an architectural element.
Nelly Agassi lives and works in Chicago, USA.

Education

1994-1998 St. Martin's Central Academy of Art, London
1999-2000 Camera Obscura, Tel Aviv
2000-2001 M.F.A., Chelsey College of Art and Design, London

Awards And Prizes

1999 The America-Israel Cultural Fund Scholarship
2000 Prize for a Young Artist, Ministry of Education and Culture
2003 The Jewish International Artist Prize, Ben Uri Gallery, London
2003 Finalist, Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation, The Israeli Art Prize, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv
2008 Prize for the Encouragement of Creative Art, Ministry of Science, Culture and Sport
2011 Prize in Visual Arts, Ministry of Culture and Sport