Rituals

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In my exhibition “Synecdoche” (Zadik Gallery, Tel Aviv 2011) I showed sculptures of women, all of them my friends. I photographed them in several poses and sculpted using the photos as reference. I still work this way.

However, when there was no available friend my daughter, Maya took on the role. The image of Maya lying back on the piano stool became the central image in this body of work.

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On one occasion I photographed a friend and none of the pictures were of use. It was the first time I threw away all the photos. A year later this friend died of cancer. From then on, I never again threw away any photo.

Despite doubts, thoughts about the mystical power of the objects and their ability to influence human destiny, began to permeate my mind.

I move on the line between my art, my motherhood and my awareness of being an orphan that often contradict each other but at the same time nourish each other.

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The repeated representations of the sacrificial rite which merges with or replaces the image of the Pieta are at the core of this body of work.  This pose appears in the context of human sacrifice among the Maya and perhaps even in earlier cultures. In my work my daughter’s lying on the "altar" is a voluntary act which suggests trust, intimacy and devotion. I, however, take the offering of my daughter and simultaneously expose, sacrifice and protect her.

I obsessively repeat this ritual, and examine how the use of different materials creates different meanings and connotations - each sculpture summoning the next one.

Sometimes I sculpt the same image anew like repeating a mantra; sometimes I use a mold and pour different materials into it.

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In his Mythologies, Roland Barthes says “For while I don't know whether, as the saying goes, 'things which are repeated are pleasing', my belief is that they are significant (translation from the French: Annette Lavers).

The work process began with a clay sculpture which seemed to look like a dancer lying backwards.

Gradually, after I had made the sculpture in bronze, and then enveloped it in a plaster shroud, the image changed and took on the meaning of a sacrificial body.

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The image of my daughter becomes a vessel for interpretations and ideas around a specific point in time – my mother’s illness and untimely death and their effect on my life. The image which visually represents Maya incorporates within it my mother, my daughter and myself, each sculpture placing one of us at the center.

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I adapted these two well-known symbols (the sacrifice and the Pieta) to my biography.

I use them as letters for a personal "handwriting". My difficulty in coping with reality from an atheistic point of view, together with the fear of the unknown in a world without God, caused me to create for myself an aesthetic substitute for religion - objects and symbols which serve as substitutes for religious icons and utensils.

These came to represent a private voodoo language as if my sculpture had the magical power to affect reality.