Artist statement
My art reflects the mixed emotions that rise from being an immigrant. The ambiguity between my will to stay close to my origins, and at the same time embrace my new surroundings is prominent in my work.

In my search for a “home”, a place to belong to, I am walking through my inner worlds, unfolding layer after layer.

Ever since arriving from Israel to New York five years ago, I used my art as a mean to search and define my origins and essence in this world.

It is a journey through the many things that I am: a woman, an Israeli, a Jew, a wife, a friend, an artist, and a teacher. This process happens unconsciously and consciously with the act of painting and writing my feelings and memories. While doing my art I always start from a place that I didn’t know before. There is no plan behind the paintings. Every stage is a bridge to the next one, and I learn torelate to the results, feel them and leave them on the canvas. The main painting action is to move from one layer to another and to develop a code of symbols, a language that I did not know before.

The Mediterranean atmosphere can be felt in my colors and textures. The existential struggle and biblical landscape are also an integral part of my works.

My paintings are large. They sometimes seem to me like a full size window with a view to the sub conscious arena out of which I create.

The acrylics and pencils that I use perfectly fit my impulsive, expressive, and sometimes explosive drives. Being fast to dry and receptive to multiple layers, the acrylics serve not only as paint but also as a connective tissue to the previous layer of memory.

Yehudit Feinstein grew up in Israel and lives in New York area since 2000.

Carmel Avivi

www.carmelavivi.com

Artist Statement
An ever present sense of longing for the lost paradise of my childhood is the central focus of my work. Living away from home in foreign surroundings has raised in me a desire to search for an elusive sense of home. Israel is the source of my search. Like an archeologist I dig in its substance to re-expose what I left behind and find – what is it that I long for? In every visit I examine this question in different ways.

I started searching from within and from my most natural and intimate environment--my family. Photographing mostly my mother and grandmother in the kibbutz where I grew up. My mother was battling breast cancer. Me grandmother is aging. We all had to adjust to threatening transitions in both our national and personal lives. With my camera, through my family, I examine my relationship to my home.

I document instances in their daily lives, and recreate moments and themes that I missed or that I visualized.

Lately, I have been moving away from the safety of this familial inner circle and searching through the larger external circle--my homeland. As a visitor I was now drawn to explore ways of life in Israel unlike my own. In each place I search for what evokes in me a sense of attachment. What part of the place and reality is still alive and vibrant inside of me.

My photography grows out of memory and absence; in my work, I make images in and about a political present that is a complicated and nostalgia-laden reality.

For more information about this show please contact the artists:

Carmel Avivi:

Yudit Feinstein: