Sustenance
These works fuse clay with fabric, wire, and screen-printed Hebrew scripts. Consisting of bonded and reiterated elements, they reflect on the basic human need to connect and nature’s malleable way of reproduction. Clay vessels are emblems of our primal necessities, as containers for carrying food and water. In these distinctive works, they are also carriers and supporters of delicate porcelain parchments inscribed with sacred prayers and cherished handwritten words.
Potent yet delicate these works present ideas of personal, cultural, and historical significance. Relating to my place of origin, Israel, they convey a transcendence of time, evoking the wish to comfort and protect, to nestle and embrace. To keep the perishable timeless.
ABA TELLS ME A STORY
My Aba’s letters, telling me stories, offering comfort. Handwritten words on a blank paper, familiar and distinctive, following me along through my life. As a warm sunny Israeli summer, painterly and illustrated, they are a part of me.
As I read them, holding on to the slightly creased paper, I notice, the handwritten familiar line, used to be curvy and confident, are no longer the same. They are now, slightly shaken embodying a transformation, a reflection of age.
Caught unaware, I am clenching my hands to the paper as if it is the only single physical thing left holding to. As our bodies age gradually, I realise, so could our writing, becoming frail or shaken. However, in turn, the handwriting like our soul, may grow richer and telling.
My work is about connection, connection to place, connection to self and connection to others.
This work conveys a fusion of many disparate elements, clay to steel, nature to man-made, past to present, frozen moment to eternity.
* Dedicated to my dear father who has and continues to inspire me, Nissim Ben Sasson.