חסר רכיב

About the Works

About the Works

Abiru Lilo

The exhibited works are a fusion of two formative events in my life, one is the story of the shared accommodation in the kibbutz from the age of three days onwards, and the other is the story of my participation as a soldier in the Golani Brigade in the First Lebanon War.
The unifying story of the works is one of abandonment; A story of not being able to understand why I am here, in the children's home or on the battlefield, with no one coming to my aid, abandoned to my fate. This harsh realization that I am alone in the world has woven within me a dense set of tissues that hold my entire physical and mental structure together, as if I had grown a new physiological system required to bind all my parts into a whole, living thing. These are the expressions for this dual complex.


Mother Shell
. 2019. Clay, fabric straps and wooden hanger
Mother Shell deals with the sense of abandonment and the role of the mother in kibbutz upbringing during the time of shared accommodation. The mother would entrust her newborn to the system at the age of three days and would come three times a day to breastfeed and return to work. Upon leaving, she would “hang” her motherhood on the wooden hanger by the door of the baby house along with the towels, pacifiers, etc.… and return to work on the kibbutz. I designed the suit as a military accessory that can be worn necessary, like a bulletproof vest.


Milk and Honey
, 2019. Clay and marble.
Milk and Honey is a work dealing with the material that we suckle from the breasts of our tangible and metaphorical mothers (the state) in the context of our tragic fate in this place. The milk we receive is saturated with violence, victims and pain. The name of the work comes from the biblical expression "a land overflowing with milk and honey".
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Ori Lenkinski and Rachel Erdos

Carriage, 2018. Video, 3:48 min.
Bringing a life into the world is a delicate act of carriage. During the long months of pregnancy, a woman’s body transforms into a vehicle for new life or lives. On the outside, she remains herself, if not a rounder version, yet on the inside, organs rearrange themselves to best encapsulate and sustain this life project. Carriage is a moment to gaze at seven pregnant, moving women.

 

Gefen Liberman

Age: 26   Week:32

Pregnancy number: 1

My body is a Ticking Bomb.

I feel like a swollen balloon.

 

Shani Katzman

Age: 32   Week:21

Pregnancy number: 2

My body is heavy, stressed, happy.

I feel very excited, expecting a different experience.

 

Talia Beck

Age: 37   Week:26

Pregnancy number: 1

My body is full of love.

I feel great, amazing. Whatever.

 

Dalia Chaimsky

Age: 39   Week: 29

Pregnancy number: 2

My body is delicate, full, a fragile container.

I feel lucky, fear, joy.

 

Roni Brandsteter

Age: 38   Week: 32

Pregnancy number: 3, 2nd child

My body is now…pregnant.

I feel pregnant.

 

Inbar Nemirovsky

Age: 39   Week: 25

Pregnancy number: 1

My body is more hormonal than ever.

I feel that every kick puts things in proportion.

 

Ori Lenkinski

Age: 36   Week: 29

Pregnancy number: 4, 2nd child

My body is strong, a little uncomfortable, stretched.

I feel joyful, nervous, excited.

 

Expecting, 2021. Video, 5:02 min.The period before birth is one of anticipation. Where now there is quiet, soon there will be sound. Where now there are empty arms, soon, we hope, there will be a small life. We walk the hallways of our homes imagining the near future, attempting to visualize the inconceivable change that awaits us. Expecting is a dance video about these moments.
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Ayelet Ginosar Cohen

What of Me and Her, 2023. Etching on paper.
A multi-layered print in which a self-portrait appears in a tangle of images from nature and a quote from a poem by Yona Wallach - "Ayala (doe) - What of me and her" that reflects my own question about the name I was given at birth. This questioning was born after I discovered at a late stage in my life the weighty meanings and tasks that the Jewish sources placed on the thin shoulders of the doe mentioned in the Bible.

 

What is the Morning Doe, 2020. Etching on paper.
An Aramaic text from the Zohar that opens with the question of what the morning doe is, and answers with a commentary on a verse from Psalms about the doe going out at night to bring food to all the animals and returning at dawn to distribute it to them. She herself feels a sense of satiety and does not need any food. The glow of the water, to which the world yearns, emanates from the womb of the doe when she gives birth. The Zoharic text is connected to a mother who gives life to her children and nourishes them physically and spiritually, for better or for worse.My daughters and I immerse in a water source.


Black Vortex, 2019-2020. Etching and masking tape print on paper.
My daughters and I are immersing in a black vortex that looks more like basalt stones than water. The black sun touches our heads and the trees seem burnt. Outwardly the figures are peaceful. Their environment, comprised of heavy sediment, reflects otherwise.


Deer.Doe
, 2020. Etching and masking tape print on masking tape.

The doe in the Zohar is a liminal creature with both male and female characteristics. She is strong and gentle, active in hours that are neither day nor night, gives life and is close to death. The masking tape is strong and easily torn, transparent and opaque, natural and artificial, a cheap material for everyday use that turns into parchment, a substrate. Shapes from nature are used as a substrate for printing or mixed with it. A doe/deer is printed on an emarginate "leaf" and enclosed in a circular tangle of rough bindweed.

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Ilana Aviv

Untitled, 2024. Layered ecological concrete.
The sharp labor pains that mark the expected and hoped for emergence of the new Israel, are marked as a desperate struggle saturated with pain. Going on a bumpy road, from a great darkness, through jagged, wounded walls towards a sharp and clear future that a considerable part of the Israeli public aspires to reach, a different Israel. Passing this way out of severe adversity inevitably creates unyielding resilience, and embodies the collective power of the human spirit, which perseveres in the face of uncertainty and upheavals. This is a nation reborn.

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Iris Shapira Yalon

I am as big as the whole room, 2023. Text
A poem from the book 'Everything I've Learned, Erase - Wild Wreath', published in 2023.
In an instant a slow observing and exposed tenderness, through body attention, imagination and conscious breathing, a relationship between a woman and herself and the world - meets within her strength and vulnerability, expansion and contraction, connection to the sublime, fear, softness and delicacy in the form of a frightened fledgling, trembling between the walls of warm thighs.

The female dynamic simultaneously contains alternating opposite feelings that are revealed by listening between inhaling and exhaling, in the breath that creates an infinite meditative circle that passes through extremes - life (inhalation) and death (exhalation).

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Efrat Ben-Yehuda Levin

How did we raise them so, A poem for the commanders, 2024. Text

Sharp criticism of the attitude of commanders in the IDF towards women, female soldiers; the female field observers who warned again and again about the suspicious organization of the terrorist organization Hamas, months before October 7, 2023, but their warnings and their highly professional work were disregarded, ignored and patronized by their commanders.
The phenomena of condescension, pride and arrogance are the downfall of society and the army. If they had listened to the soldiers and their reports, the greatest disaster in the history of the State of Israel would have been avoided and the lives of the soldiers would have been saved.
Without accusing anyone in particular, the poem is directed at all parts of society, men and women, and at the need for a social-wide correction. Women are the mothers of the commanders; it is upon us women to correct this distorted reality.

Education begins at home.
Let us treat women and any human being with respect and humility.
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Eti Gadish de Lange

Here I Am, 2024. Wood veneer.
The female statue "Here I am", standing, tall, stable and proud, rises in a movement reminiscent of a dance, or an appeal, perhaps a prayer to the universe. Maybe it symbolizes Mother Earth for the artist.
The belly of the figure holds the hope for the birth of something new and optimistic, which will bring peace and quiet to our region and to the entire world.
The work is influenced by the painting by Diego Velazquez, "Las Meninas" from 1656, which depicts the little daughter of the King of Spain in a warm domestic scene during a difficult time in Spain. The painting connected Gadish de Lange to hope, security and survival.
The statue is made of veneer, using a weaving technique. The natural material was taken from scraps at the Birman Wood Industries factory, so it is made of recycled materials that return to nature. The dimensions of the statue - approximately 280 cm high, 160 cm wide, 90 cm deep.

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Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger

From the series: Angel of Carriance - Halala, 2024. Oil on canvas.
A work from a series in which figures carrying a baby, looking into nowhere, based on a photograph from an execution - a massacre - of Jewish women and babies in World War II. All of them search for the way to beauty out of the great horror, and seek threads to the future out of the unthinkable.

All my works feature the motif I call "Matrix": the womb, the pregnancy, and the Pietà: childbirth and the maternal mourning of loss.
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Dana Nitzani

My works serve as a visual language to illustrate and process complex memories, experiences and emotions. The question that guides me is how one can describe personal and female trauma through material, composition and color, through textures and stains.

Red Moon, 2022. Ink, dry raspberry stems, embroidery.

White Holes, 2022. Perforation, stitching and embroidery on layers of paper.
In my pieces Red Moon and White Holes, I use paper, thread and needle. I explore the tension created between the actions that emphasize constant change; the natural rhythm of life. The movement of the filling and emptying of the body of emotion and matter.

 

Longing Landscape, 2023. Monotype print.
In this series of works, I use fine old silk papers that hold subtle occurrences and textures created as a result of folding and crumpling. The fine range of textures leaves its mark on the page. I ask what an emotion looks like and receive an answer through the expanses of color in geological layers that gather wrinkles corresponding to the ranges of emotion, to a feeling of trembling in the body. These are one-off prints that reflect this moment.

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Danielle Feldhaker

Over the Rainbow, 2023. Photography, plaster casting, prism, flashlight and podium.
In nature, a rainbow is created by the refraction of sunlight as it passes through water droplets. In this work I create an artificial rainbow with the help of a prism and a flashlight. The rainbow is the sign of the covenant made after the flood between God and Noah and the animals that survived in the ark.
The essence of the covenant is the commitment of humans not to destroy and kill, and God's commitment not to bring another flood on the world. The rainbow symbolizes renewal, hope, harmony, love and a better future.

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Victoria Viki Marudi

Newborn, 2016. Casting material, freezer.           
NEWBORN is both the womb and the encounter with the real world. The womb, the freezer, keeps the material from drying out. Opening the freezer introduces moisture, disrupts the preservation conditions of the material and damages it. What damages the material is also what recreates it and sculpts it again and again until the material fades and returns to itself in its raw form.
NEWBORN is the birth time of a material. In this case the freezer is like an oven, instead of heating it freezes. Freezing actually produces signs that are considered a natural part of the life of a ceramic material such as cracks, collapse, even explosion.

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Tal Bedrack

Saints, 2023-2024. Photo transfer.
A series of images that express the breaking point we are at since the events of October 7. Into the images I pour my private whirlwind of emotions and through them bring it out to the audience, as an invitation to share, comfort, encounter the contents and process the emotions. The images are photographed portraits of people aged 20-30, in studio lighting. I chose to work with this age group, because this is the generation that is at the beginning of its adult life and is now thrown into a terrible reality, into a great crisis. Their look to the future in my eyes is full of worry, anxiety, uncertainty. Visually, the members of this generation bear unmistakable outward signs and place the images on the historical timeline. Although it is not defined as a documentary work, it contains the signs of the time. On the surface, the photographed figures show an attractive appearance, external beauty and attention to the "correct" light and position, but when you look deeper, you discover that the eyes are troubled and the faces express difficult emotions: from terror and fear to anxiety, shock and freezing.

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Yuval Etzioni

Baby Shower Party, 2024. Knitting, stitching, embroidery, fibers and various fabrics. Seven items, created over seven months, are fashioned from textile materials, inspired by a tiny knitted dress found in a thrift store. A text written for the future of three generations of women in the family. The written words and the material objects were formulated in the context of contemporary life in Israel. At the same time, they are also a position striving for social change in the future.
The shape of the dress is a visual representation that evolved into an archetype of the female body and hence was chosen as a gift for generations of women, as a promise that travels between past, present and future.
Gifts given at a baby shower are supposed to give the mother a sense of security for her existence and for the existence of the fetus that is about to be born. The series of dresses created in the context of a situation of sadness and existential anxiety, holds hope for the continuity of life, like a pledge between a woman and her daughter, her granddaughter and her great-granddaughter.
The objects are made of fibers, fabrics and textile operations, and together they constitute a material autobiography of the creator as a child, woman and artist. At the same time, they form part, as an archetypal code, in the struggle to challenge the hegemony of social and cultural institutions, which are losing validity and meaning, and offer an infrastructure for formulating new concepts, which will serve to create new social foundations.

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Limor Tsror

Crisis, 2024. Wood.
The word 'crisis' (mashber in Hebrew) has a negative connotation of difficulty and rupture. In the Bible, however, it is positive and refers to the moment of transition of the fetus from the womb on its way into the world. In the Talmud and in the Middle Ages, the 'mashber ' is mentioned as a birthing chair. Sitting on a birthing chair is a fateful moment experienced as being on the brink of death, but at the end of it, life is created. It was only in the 15th century that the approach which equates birth with illness was formed, and it is still accepted today. The birthing position changed from sitting to lying on the back, and the process is accompanied by a doctor.
The mashber  as an image linked danger and intense pain with the possibility of the birth of something new. In its contemporary meaning, crisis brings us to fateful moments that also invite new possibilities.
My inspiration was the image of the medieval 'mashber ' birthing chair, disrupted. The chair that was built for the exhibition is twisted. Breaking the perspective takes it out of use and redirects it towards a new idea.

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Mai Daas

A woman has enormous power that she is not always aware of. The women in my paintings appear in the open space, in a fragment of landscape. They represent a private and personal struggle, but the choice to place them outside indicates a public and social context. The private is also public. My women do not decide the reality in which they are depicted, but they are always active, always present, standing as the center. That way, their power seems no less strong than the power of the surrounding reality.

 

Untitled, 2024. Oil on canvas.
Five women strengthen, assist and support each other in a circular shape under the wall, in poses of gathering inward to suspend time. A shared feminine power allows them not to fall.


Map, 2022. Oil on canvas.
Two women in traditional black clothing and braided hair, supporting each other; Their eyes are turned up, to the leaves above. The space created between them recalls the shape of ​​this country.The painting deals with my personal identity and my female identity and the inherent tension between them, with a constant political-social reference: being a Palestinian Muslim Arab woman in a Jewish country.

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Untitled, 2019. Oil on canvas.
A woman in a traditional hijab looks upwards, with a pin used to hold the hijab in her eye. The pattern of the hijab that wraps and hides her is an arabesque pattern.

The gaze of the woman and gaze of the surrounding society, along with the viewer's encounter with her, hide a dual desire: For exposure and concealment, for softness and acceptance together with defiance and warning against violence and forces over which she has no control. The characters in the paintings yearn to belong but feel disconnected. They feel the need to defend themselves, but recognize their strength and power.

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Mahmood Kaiss

The Dome, 2018. Installation, wood.
"Arabesque Dome No. 5" is a dome made up of geometric units that together form a more complex pattern that creates the entire dome. Temporary scaffolding in a geometric arabesque pattern, allows you to see through it.  The dome, a ritual-religious-spiritual form of perfection, eternity and infinity, is also identified with the Muslim building culture. I invite you to see it at eye level, up close. At the same time, it is also closed, it is impossible to enter it.

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Michel Platnic

Genesis, 2018. Video, 9:33 min.
Through pictorial, sculptural, theatrical and cinematic means, a play for one actor was created with a chronological story describing the story of the creation of the world (as it is presented in chapter 1 of the book of Genesis) followed by the use that man makes of it, leading to the destruction of nature.
Creation begins with the banishment of darkness and the appearance of the creator God in an empty room painted blue, without distinguishing between walls, floor and ceiling. From then on, God creates his world and inhabits the space with animals and plants, through plastic means, paralleling God's words and the act of painting.
The visual mechanism underlying the work is based on the scaling down, approximation and reduction of material, space and time, using different mediums, symbols, and gestures from the world of magic. The great and wonderful actions in the biblical story of creation, as wide as the universe, are translated to an intimate scale and familiar images: The world is a domestic space, the sun and the moon are lighting fixtures, flora is represented by potted plants, fauna - by a cat and a bird; The creation of the world and its destruction in a nutshell.
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Ma’ayan Choresh

Rooming-In, 2024. Video, 7 min
Excerpt from the performance Rooming-In, 2024. Video, 7 min.
The work premiered in March 2024.

“One’s autonomy in society can be measured by what happens around the moment of birth and pregnancy and the women's ability to choose.”  (Dr. Michel Odent, physician/researcher).

In Rooming-In I return to my experience of giving birth to my daughter. The physical and mental imprints that are left in the body express themselves in a new way, reminding us that the body is also/always the site of conflict, a political site.
The full live performance will be presented as part of the exhibition on Saturday, November 30th.

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Noam Ben Gurion Mosseri

Self Portrait, 2019. Photography.

Body, Object, Home, 2023. Photography.
Motherwifeartist
Wife. Home. Role. Feeling. Potential.
The materials that make up the everyday.
Chicken. Bread. Bucket. Rag. An external gaze of a photographer, who is me, on a strange woman, who is me. A space where all experiences, sights, actions, everyday moments intuitively become raw materials. Unanswered questions live inside me, bubbling and being revealed during the creative process inside the home that consists of countless details. Exposed.

Capsule, 2022. Photography.
The content, the understanding, the mystery and the secret that lie in the process of change and attention are a consequence of the process of embodiment from the change and movement that is life. The life of a woman who is a person in the world, where the horizon is opened and revealed to her and the questions in it remain the basis of existence as well as the answer.
Capsule is the place inside me that is not affected by the journey. A stable and solid place, an eternal place.

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Naftali Nachmani

Untitled, 2023-2024. A tray, oily liquid with red pigment, a second-hand napkin, a lens from an optics factory and cardboard.

Untitled, 2023-2024. Enamel bowl, oily liquid with red pigment, glass and cardboard.

Untitled, 2023-2024. Silicone, iron wire and cardboard.

My works deal with social and political problems - the downfall of the socialist regime, the collapse of the kibbutz movement and the place of the individual in society. I often deal with symbols that I repeat and handle over and over again. The fetuses in my works symbolize our existence in Israel and the social and political myths we grow up with.
"...Mothers, mothers in the world – stand like a stout wall to keep and protect your children, because without them there is nothing - without them, death moves in your cold, silent bodies..."  (From the text "Zuzik" by poet Yocheved Bat-Miriam, who wrote about her son who fell in the War of Independence.)
In my preoccupation with the little baby and his relationship with the mother, I often duplicate him again and again like an assembly line of children, like in the kibbutz baby home in the past. According to the same production line, every newborn knows that one day he will have to pay his debt to the society that believes that "it is good to die for our country".

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Nardeen Srouji

Titled, 2021. Mixed media sculpture.

The gaps between near and far, between intimate and strange and between true and false are found at the basis of the work. What appears from a distance as a feminine space highlighting the act of crucifixion and emphasizing the perception of women as victims, is revealed from up close to be a female silhouette looking at the bottom of the pool while swimming. The bottom and the sides are for a moment a pool and for a moment a spiritual space, changing, flickering like the movement of water.
The skills and strength inherent in a swimmer's body, which I inherited and learned from my father, are the opposite of those accepted in the orientalist external gaze that observes Palestinian women as victims of a conservative patriarchal system.
However, the work also turns a question inward - towards itself or towards its society, when it examines its very existence.

 

Buqjah, I,II,III, 2018. Plaster, Perspex and white paint.
Buqjah is one of the Palestinian art symbols of the migration (Hijrah) that resulted from The Nakba in 1948. Buqjah was the piece of cloth that Palestinians used to bundle up everything they could grab while fleeing the Israeli occupation forces that invaded their homes. The relationship between the bundle and its plaster representation also reflects a cultural and political relationship.

My work deals with the spaces or gaps between stability and instability, placement and displacement, familiarity and estrangement. I appropriate familiar objects, images, and sounds from my surroundings and transform them into an intervention, inviting the viewer to reconfigure their understanding and relationship with the world. These interventions seek to push boundaries and challenge the status quo by departing from their familiar functions, turning the critique inward to question their own existence. I materialize social relations in their essence. The materials—plaster and white paint—represent the institution. The white fabric resembles a white flag of surrender or a piece of cloth placed on furniture when leaving a space, protecting it from the effects of time.
The representation of this bundle is placed inside a colorful and shiny packaging like shiny merchandise in a store, a commodity, a souvenir.
In many ways, this artwork presents a phenomenon that invades many layers of existence: political, cultural, and personal. In other words, it is an embodiment of the complex, multilayered dynamic of dwelling in a place. Being a woman, a Palestinian, an artist surrounded by Palestinian community and culture, and living in Israel, presenting my work in the Israeli art institution: these various layers, and the expectations from the multilayered dynamics, brought this artwork to life.
Buqjah presents a two-way critique of Palestinian art that is expected of a Palestinian female artist in an art in general and in the Israeli art sphere in particular. What is expected is usually summed up in the representation of political victimhood or female victims in a patriarchal society. In both cases it should be "white" enough to the taste of the institution. This is how political catastrophes like the Nakba can become a marketable product, a commodity that can be sold in the art world,
diluting the essence it possesses.
Buqjah presents what is expected in the art sphere from a female Palestinian artist and at the same time criticizes this dynamic and questions itself. It is feminine and masculine at the same time. It is the embodiment of expectations and critique in the same object, wondering whether a choice, an object, or an idea can exist on its own with no relation to its environment.

Stitch Unstitch, 2022. Video art installation, 13 min.(loop)
In this video, I took one of the traditional Palestinian art forms that bears historical meaning and transformed it into a tool that interprets the present from a different angle. I used Palestinian red embroidery, which traditionally exists in forms of patterns as symbols that convey a lot of information about the person wearing it. In this piece, I abstracted these symbols to their building unit, the (X), and used it in the form of lines that resemble writing or counting.
The video shows both of my hands from opposite sides of the screen: one embroidering the red X (stitching) and the other performing the opposite act (unstitching). At some point in the video, the hands reverse or exchange roles, creating a perfect loop. As a result, the gap between them is never closed, and it becomes a moving element from left to right.
This artwork is not meant to be watched from beginning to end but is a meditative act based on a combination of movement and transformation, forcing the viewer to focus and understand both opposite operations at the same time.
 Stitch Unstitch, 2022 is a piece that challenges the comfortable stance of the observer and pushes the boundaries of the status quo in which it transpires.

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Suma Kaedan

A series of objects from "Prayer to Ishtar" which deals with an attempt to blur and question the line of the division into beautiful and ugly, holy and impure, through the meeting between soft and hard materials. Ishtar, the goddess of sex and fertility, holds two contrasting manifestations: Ishtar of fertility and life and Ishtar of the underworld and death.

 

Crib, 2017. Metal and barbed wire.
A menacing-looking crib is made of barbed wire and over it hangs a pantyhose filled with sand with dangling strands of hair, reminiscent of female braids or plaited hair, or hair trimmings that are considered a kind of dirt. These create a sharp contrast to the idea of ​​a crib as an environment of protection and natural security, a safe abode of beauty, tenderness and innocence. The work invites the viewer to think about the tension between delicacy and violence, between innocence and danger and between life and loss.

 

Alienation, 2017. Linen yarn and toy snakes.
The Medusa myth tells of the goddess Athena who cursed Medusa after she lured Poseidon into the sea and turned her into an ugly monster with snake hair. Seven braids made of linen threads, tied and ending in hanging toy snake tails, falling, twisting on the wall in flesh and earth colors. The garlic chains are also hung in this way, to drive away the evil spirits and demons. Hair braids are seen as a symbol of delicacy and innocence, purity and traditional feminine beauty. The snake, on the other hand, symbolizes danger, cunning and sometimes temptation. The work invites the viewer into a hybrid and unexpected experience through unrelated materials.

Baby Bottle, 2017. Hair and stockings.
A common baby bottle, with a bottle nipple covered with woven threads made of human hair, evokes primary images with contrasting feelings. The moment of suckling is an innocent image of a baby sucking from a soft and delicate nipple some soft, warm and nutritious food. But our initial imagination here meets a nipple with hair. The hair may evoke feelings of dirtiness, confusion, or something that has gone wrong, thus undermining the idea of ​​nourishment and care. The work invites the viewer to think about the connections between breastfeeding and care for the helpless creatures coming into the world as a sacred space, in contrast with the dangerous, the threatening and the impure.

 

Ishtar, 2017. Chair, hair, stockings and wool.
A chair is covered with organic, round and soft shapes made of hosiery fabric and sewn with human hair, densely packed side by side. Some of the hair is tight, some is loose; Together it covers almost the entire area with only the legs of the chair visible, slightly distorted. The fragile and imperfect artificial-organic chair is both an intriguing and unsettling sight. It raises questions about the relationship between body, material and structure, and also about human frailty and how it deals with weaknesses, flaws or imperfections.

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Sana Farah-Bishara

Silent Scream, 2018. Mixed media.
Sensual and proud women, who correspond with the tradition of classical figurative sculpture and at the same time subvert it, express the conflictual reality of their lives as women, daughters and mothers.
They sway and struggle between obedience to the norms required of them and between the mental storms taking place in their inner world. They were created from a small sculpture whose form is conceptual, concise and frightening, expressing a trapped and silenced pain. The humble prototype that replicated itself is the result of soul-searching and a prolonged internal process, which matured into a clear statement that no longer denies the long, deep pain. It highlights that which is not talked about, which is hidden and feared, in the form of women who lost their feminine and sexual physical characteristics and became ghosts who carry the trauma, which has not been healed, as a testimony and a memory.

 

Untitled, 2011. Bronze and aluminum.
A baby in the fetal position is placed on a hard and spiky leaf of a prickly pear. The soft figure is vulnerable on the symbolic leaf. The foundation alludes to a journey, personal or collective, which requires endurance and coping, and raises questions about the possibility of a new beginning in a challenging environment. The leaf, with its powerful and traditional presence, takes on the role of a protector and companion, like a guardian of the life being created within it.

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Abed Abdi

I sympathize with the shared enterprise in setting up this important exhibition in Givat Haviva. The theme of shared society has been on my mind since childhood. How to express my attitude towards what is happening around me as a child who experienced the Nakba, how to express the protest of the minority, and how to create a situation where the two peoples can create a shared life in a common land for the sake of social justice, equality and peace.

The three works chosen for this exhibition reflect my position and outlook on a creative alternative to our situation today.

 

After the Handmaids, 2023. Acrylic on canvas.
The work is part of the solidarity series and was created following the handmaids’ protest march. My work "The Demonstrator" from 1985 is currently exhibited in the Umm al-Fahm Art Gallery.

 

Playing Card, 2019. Acrylic on paper.
This is part of a series of works dealing with human character, between good and bad, between beautiful and ugly.

 

Solidarity, 2021. Dip pen on paper.
A work originally created in 1982, which has been damaged and recreated in recent years. It suggests an awareness of identification with the Palestinian people, for freedom, the eradication of the occupation and peace between the nations.

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Adina Bar On

Motherland, 2001. Video, 3:33 min.
This video-artwork titled Motherland, opens with an image of a woman dressed in black, standing with her back to the camera, facing the panoramic view of Old Jerusalem. In this frame, woman and landscape draw equal attention; visually, no one component is more prominent than the other, thus the viewer’s gaze goes back and forth between the two. If the woman were facing the camera, then most of the visual attention would be directed towards the woman, and the holy city would become mere background. Yet, since the woman’s face is hidden
, her presence is equal to the landscape. The visual balance between woman and holy site creates a simplistic, poster-like picture with no ambiguities. Although Motherland begins with the image of a woman and a sacred site as one symmetrical vision, this small video-work attempts to reveal the ambiguities between the image and its narratives.

 

About Love, 2004-2012, 2024. Performance, 45 min.
About Love is composed of three parts whose movement and images express the woes of war. The three parts evolve in a silent, slow and meditative manner, and are based on the following three images:
*A seated woman who wears black. Her pointing-finger and the inside of her palm, marked in black paint, reveal an infant’s soiled shirt inside a white bowl
.
*A standing woman who wears black. Her pointing-finger and the inside of her palm, marked in black paint, are crushing a gold coin while her knee presses upon a white hanging baby shirt
.
*A standing woman who wears black. Her pointing-finger and the inside of

her palm, marked in black paint, reveals a print of Albrecht Dürer’s “Madonna and Child” inside a baby’s shirt.

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Oz Inbar

Partnerships, 2022. Oil on canvas.
'Partnerships' is part of a series of works concerning the relations in the "uterine space" between the fetus/baby and its mother partner, and its partners from past and future times. These relationships are revealed and move between known and unknown partnerships, open and hidden, separate, shared, overlapping.
At the heart of the encounter, the "wound" is revealed. Its exposure enables recovery, followed by healing.  (The concept of "partnerships" was inspired by artist Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger)

 

Flower, 2024. Oil on canvas.
The appearance of the flower in the uterine space marks the healing of the wound. The flower is its metamorphosis. Its appearance implies the possibility of the continuity of the relationship between the partners and the fetus that is about to be born.

 

Primary Fear, 2024. Oil on canvas.
We are pushed out of the protective, enveloping, warm and dark womb shell, into a sensory world flooded with impressions. What do we experience in our first moments of life? What accompanies our first sensations in the world? 'Primary fear' allows a kind of look or glimpse into these moments.

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Rachel Aharon

They’re Back, 2024. Aquatint.
On October 8, the reporter Tamir Steinman posted on Facebook: "A moment of hope: Dozens of celebrators from the music festival in Re’im who were missing/kidnapped, appear out of nowhere in the agricultural area near Netivot." The news spread quickly throughout the country and planted false hopes in the hearts of many families.  Illusory moments between hope and despair.

 

Marchers, 2024. Aquatint.

The marchers talk,

The marchers protest,

The marchers resist,

The marchers march with a flag,

The marchers march,

What do the shadows tell us?

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Editor: Anat Lidror 

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