My Mother's Country
2021, Architect's House Gallery, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel
2021, Duivelsteen, Gent, Belgium
My Mother's Country comprises three series of works, which come together to explore the transformation of ancestral experiences into identity myths, spanning three generations of my family's history.
The first series comprises three paintings inspired by the work of contemporary Aboriginal painter Barbara Weir. These paintings My Mothers’ Country relates the myths of my own ancestral lands – from the streets of Frankfurt, to the fields of Israel. The paintings are carried out in a similar pointillist technique, but rendered in fungal mycelium (mushroom roots), making them living, dynamic objects. These objects explore the real-world locations and experiences of my family’s previous generations, which have passed into myth.
The ethereal wispy whiteness of these living paintings harbors an additional layer of meaning - if they are to remain white, they must be produced and kept in strictly controlled conditions. This issue is intentionally explored, as some works are produced in a participatory group context. This relaxation of control and addition of ‘foreign’ hands into the production process causes these objects to develop a different visual – more randomized or even with additional colors – through the introduction of uncontrolled cultures into the painting.