WOMEN / The Mill Building Ein Afeq Nature Reserve

הצילומים באדיבות The Mill Building Ein Afeq Nature Reserve

"Women"

The fifth biennial of printmaking in memory of Ora Lahav-Shaaltiel

Women constitute half of the mankind; therefore there is no single exhibition that can reflect women, their lives and the issues that interests them. Therefore, I chose not to reduce the subject to a single ray of light, to a feminine corner, in order not to imprison us, women, in a binding framework. I preferred to open the door to the personal choice of each artist, weather his angles of femininity are sharp or round. Weather she has satisfactions or frustration with the feminine experience, protest or accepting, doubts or self-confidence in it. The result is a multi-faceted exhibition but also missing subjects. Most of the participants are women: 30 women and only three men. This imbalance by itself dictates preferences of some subjects.

Many of the women artists participating in the exhibition chose to deal with classic feminine themes: pregnancy and childbirth, motherhood and family, relationships, the lust for beauty, aging. Also, the struggle for equal rights and the possibility of being engaged in any profession are present in this exhibition. Women's companionship and their special interests are also a significant issue in this exhibition.

Defining a person as a woman or a man refers to the sexual the physical or mental aspects. Sexuality is perhaps the most significant component of the masculine view of women. The men artists Dubi Harel and Shamai Ran express it in their works, in which the female body is emphasized as an object of desire. Some women artists also refer to the female body, but their point of view emphasizes aesthetics and lack the desire.

Pregnancy and birth processes presented from a feminine angle refer to the disappearance of the virgin body, to the extra weight gain that causes deformity of the body's central part, to the physical difficulty of dealing with the older children when it is not the first birth, to the fear of loss or damage to the professional career. All of these women's dilemmas, which are rarely noticed by men, are presented in the exhibition by Daphna Spector, Lea Ben-Yosef, Michal Blayer, Haya Weisshaus and Nadia Kadri-Gadban. Confronting these, Ora Lahav-Shaaltiel emphasizes the deep emotional need of women for the unique feminine experience, while Tamar Sorkin focuses on the process and the outcome not the body that carries it.

The feminine desire for beauty is another subject that is widely expressed in the exhibition. The emotional soft and round side of the woman's physique is given in the works of Nava Sidon, Laura Behar, Ora Lahav-Shaaltiel, Margo Paran, Yael Sonino-Levy. The aspiration for beauty contains many emotional components: the competitive need to achieve parity and a social status, the instinctive sense of aesthetics, women's education, and the enjoyment from the adorning ceremony. The artists Tal Goldman, Nurith Eppstein-Ratner, Lea Ben Yosef, Gali Shalem, Malca Mossberg, Tamar Sorkin, all describe the daily necessity to take care of the appearance and its results: the use of makeup, jewelry and accessories, the importance of the mirror. Daphna Spector describes the stubborn race of women against time, with plastic surgeries in order to return the lost beauty. At the end of the road, Yael Saranga illustrates the despair of women on aging that is always portrayed as worse than of men due to the loss of beauty and aesthetics.

The struggle of women to achieve a better social status in society - feminism, is widely represented in the exhibition: women's professions versus professions that were not considered as such until a few years ago, continuing women's discrimination, exclusion of women, and oppression of women. Eliya Beany illustrates how long do women yet to go in order to reach a more egalitarian place in society. Shamai Ran and Dubi Harel describe women artists, a reading woman - common among women more than men. Elinor Rotem presents homage to the poet Leah Goldberg. Taghreed Habeb, Nadia Kadri-Gadban, Rina Ring, Sara Burshtein, Orly Lancet-Joseph, all participate in a discourse on the status of women. Tair Hitron Parnes, Drora Eylon and Esti Kolton refer to typical women craftsmanship, which required patience, perseverance and time, which are still present in the less technological parts of the world. Is there nostalgia and admiration of the creativity in it or do they see them as a way of exclusion, an expression of an outdated society? Ruth Cohen asks in her work based on texts written by the philosopher Levinas: Is the feminine face a part of human faces in the society?

The struggle between the sexes and various ways of couples are not presented in the exhibition as part of the discussion of the women's status, though it has an echo in the works of Ora Lahav-Shaaltiel, Haya Weisshaus, Nadia Kadri-Gadban, Rina Ring. Perhaps the modern discussions about marriage of male or female, homosexuality, lesbian relationship, transgender and other methods of sexuality - changed the polarized definitions of women from Venus and men from Mars to a whole space of sexual areas.

Women's groups that work together in friendship, speak in women's language about feminine experiences and solidarity, enjoy different items than those of men, but also gossip and envy each other, all of those subjects appear in an exhibition, along with women's education, which differs from men's education by its indoctrination. It is expressed in the works of Esti Kolton, Gigi Ram, Gali Shalem, Michal Blayer, Tair Hitron Parnes.

Women's fatigue in an endless cycle of tasks, the frequency of pain in women, their sensitivity to cold temperatures, women's illnesses and their consequences, women's mental and physical efforts, all of it are presented in the works of Israela Angel, Taghreed Habeb, Sima Levin, Neta Avidar, Sara Burshtein, Leah Ben Yosef, Yael Saranga, Margo Paran, Laura Behar, Hana Altartz.

This exhibition brings to the audience the daily life of women, not heroic acts, no larger than reality figuers.

Haya Weisshaus 2017