פירוק והרכבה /
Disassembly & reassembly
The term “disassembly and reassembly” is borrowed from military slang. Every soldier in basic training is required to practice taking apart and reassembling an M16 rifle, to become familiar with each and every part. Often, if there was a “gap” in the schedule or a period of waiting, we were sent to practice “disassembly and reassembly” – an activity that became synonymous with dead time, something to do when there was nothing else.
My works are based on canvases of various sizes, found on the streets of Tel Aviv. Some were painted, others drawn upon – all used. For me, as an artist and a painter, these were treasures – real finds. I collected them immediately and brought them to the studio, “just in case.”
Following the war, my family and I were forced to leave our home in a kibbutz in northern Israel due to the threat of missile attacks and terrorist infiltrations. That’s how I found myself in a new environment – Tel Aviv. Like my temporary residence, the studio where I currently create is a borrowed space – not mine, unfamiliar. Its contents are composed of a collection of found items, some improvised, others kindly donated by good-hearted people.
The studio has become a shelter for me – both literally and symbolically. A place to come to every morning, to cling to a semblance of routine, and above all, to continue doing what is familiar to me – art.
For the first time in my life, I found myself under the heavy and frightening label – refugee. For me, this word immediately evokes my family history and the fate of the Jewish people during the Holocaust. Again and again, the figures of my grandmother and her mother – my great-grandmother – came to mind. Both endured the Holocaust as refugees from Prague, Czechoslovakia, and immigrated to Israel after the war.
In my work, “Disassembly and Reassembly,” I dismantle and reassemble portraits of three women: my grandmother – Eva, her mother – Grunia, and myself. The portraits become a purposeless logic game – mixed-up parts, inverted, mismatched. The lines are incomplete, the background missing, and the human urge for order and meaning remains unfulfilled.
