The sculpture is inspired by childhood memories of the Arab women that used to sell herbs, vine leaves, figs, and especially cactus fruit, by the small shopping center in my neighborhood. Part of the exchange was that the woman released the fruit from its hard, unpleasant, external shell to the consumers.
With replete fruit growing from her body — the abstract figure of the sculpture seated on the ground resembles in itself a “prickly pear” hedge — creating a hybrid.
The musical jewelry box is a symbol of a lost European romantic essence, it served as a small treasure chest where European girl's and women's most precious belongings were kept.
This seemingly ordinary music box, where a small ballerina once typically turned, played the tune of “The Dying Swan” by the French composer Camille Saint-Saens (instead of Tchaikovsky's “Swan Lake” or other ordinarily cheerful and popular tunes). Surrounded by old jewelry of mixed origins, the figure pirouetting inside this edition is not a ballerina but rather a doner kebab. Turning continuously like the oriental street food, I created this hybrid using watermelon flesh and paper-mâché.
The image in this triptych evolved through several mediums and stages. It began culminating in this oil painting by depicting two characters in a lake with water at waist level. The figures are seen leaning forwards with their heads inside the water and their arms outstretched. Their reflection in the lake creates an image of open eyes.
The biblical story in the Book of Judges about Jephthah's daughter is a tragic tale of a father sacrificing his only daughter. Before setting out to battle the Ammonites, Jephthah vows that if he triumphs over his enemies, he will sacrifice as an offering to God the first creature to greet him upon his return. Jephthah's daughter, who knew nothing of his vow, set out to welcome him dancing. Her father fulfilled his vow and sacrificed her.
"This work revolved around my interest in the motif of female victimhood, as reflected in the story of Jephthah and his daughter. The girl's taut adolescent body, which is portrayed in paper mache', pigment, and metal armature, shows her holding two contrasting elements: a tambourine and a welding mask. The tambourine is attributed to her art history as she is usually shown dancing in celebration of her father's victory. The welding mask is an element borrowed from my studio."
A Model of a Watchtower incorporates a functioning hourglass. The hourglass sand which measures the passing of time does more than this. At the cabin at the top of this Watchtower sit two cast figures of soldiers.
The soldiers, one with binoculars and the other armed with a gun are a part of the hourglass as they disappear and reappear in every turning of this object.
This work consists of a hollow bronze cast of an old bomb shelter that was slated for demolition and which I encountered in south Tel Aviv.
"I had made a mold of the shelter's external and visible part as well as of its internal staircase, which led underground. The cast entrance and the stairway had become in my work one uprooted structure. The unseen, subterranean part of the shelter was not at viewers' eye level, and the original floor level was pushed above the ground."
A sculpture of a life-sized boy as he leans towards his hands, drinking the water which flows from his eyes.
This piece shows one side of the weight scale empty, and the other side dented and hammered. Evidently, the scales remain balanced.
In this sculpture, which has become a personal theme, a woman is seen doubling over in pain as something departs and arrives from within her body. Her head is visible between her legs. This piece portrays three time zones and three organs undergoing highly improbable procedures. It also raises three crucial questions: Who is the woman? Who will she be after abandoning who she was? Can one perform the metaphoric leap of turning oneself inside out?
"This sculpture embodies for me a plethora of unanswered questions: Is this woman exploring a second chance to be alive? Is she the Holy Mother? Is she carrying out a variation of the Christian baptism ceremony? A rebirth? Is this combination of solid bones and expandable holes the depiction of life or death? Is the woman gasping for air or in an attempt to restore lost dignity?"
A man and a woman in the act of lovemaking while occupied with their personal cuneiform tablets.