To whisper. Not shout. To suggest. Not determine. To ask – without expecting finite answers. To paint images which the viewer can relate to from their personal, ever-changing point of view. All this drives me when I am creating. The topics that arise in my art are related to the daily actions we take in society, which in turn, dictates its rules upon us. It begins with family relationships and dives into the female image in patriarchal society, identity and gender perception. Things which are swept down the carpet of the family dinner, reappear in my works on the table itself. My inspiration often comes from films, children’s stories, costume catalogs, old photos, social media posts, and more. I work with diverse surfaces such as canvas, cloth, cardboard, tablecloths, old books and plastics applying oil paints, acrylic, charcoal, colored markers and varnish.
Being an immigrant artist and a child who kept travelling back and forth between Argentina and Israel, I feel that in order to read and interpret my work, one has to think of the term ‘translation’. When we use a certain term or reference in different languages, it takes on new baggage and connotations. I see the act of painting as an act of meta-lingual translation. An act that transmits a variety of cultural contexts through the same ‘word’ – or in my case – the same image.
When I approach the painting of a family scene, for instance, I create it with contexts of different patterns that are not dichotomies but rather – fluid. The same goes for the way I refer in my works to the topic of gender. In the same image, I try to encompass a rainbow of identities and meanings, not reducing it to one single sense. My visual vocabulary also incorporates a process of abstraction and converses with both figurative and expressive painting. In addition, although my work carries an ongoing dialog with forms of representation & painting which are common to each of the cultures that I am part of – I remain a spectating outsider.
