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".
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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).
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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".
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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.
__________________________
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?
________________
Editor: Anat Lidror