Tel Aviv - MinneapolisHow can one explain in words the intolerable life in Israel while living in a new state, Minnesota? Here, media “news” is about the weather, geese that arrive every summer and depart in winter seeking warmth in a different place, about diffident politics of words, about hurricanes and tornadoes. It is without daily death, without mandatory searches of bags and persons in every entrance of cafés or banks … without the fear that someone in front of me will explode, or stab me with a knife.
How can one explain to Americans the manner in which death’s sacred pall becomes mundane and matter-of-fact? How we in Israel simply “get used to it”? Our reaction only depends on the numbers of the dead today. How the despair and loss of hope become part of living, waking, breathing, sleeping. How we live without tomorrow or yesterday – but not with joy that is inherent to other “in the moment” philosophies? The reality of life in Israel is written according to the war of everyone against everyone all the time.
My work explores the way moving between these two countries feels to me -- through paper and paint. I express how the endless violence against the daily calmness of life affects me. It moves me to create sensations, smells, and an atmosphere of fear through an endless cascade of colors.
Ronit Yanizki