BRAID-BREAD, 1996
Clay cast of Challah Breads (10” x 6” x 3” each), hair, furniture

Bread-Braid is an installation made from clay cast Challah Bread and hair, expressively displayed on pieces of furniture. It explores the meaning and the process of producing works of art (performing an act? Creating an intervention? making a transgressive move?

The piece also hints upon Religious Jewish sensibilities, while mixing together the holy and metaphoric (Challah Bread) with the secular and seductive (women's hair).

The piece was conceived while I was living in the Lower East Side, in my first NY apartment, next to a kosher bakery.

9 Painted cardboard moving boxes, life-size figure painted on construction paper, text printed on the wall, hand made puppet

Like a reckless animal chasing after its own tail, our journey through life, ends up being circular. In the physical realm, our starting point is a "House" (a place of origin, a family, a name). Our body is also a house, which carries us from the beginning of the journey until the end. The journey awaits us with various transitory houses and our imagined destination is a house (a container of our individual identity accumulated by objects and fulfilled desires)

A house would never be a Home though, and in the midst of the search for the safe woom like dwelling place, we often mistake between the two. As long as Home can’t be found, there is no peace.

What is home if it isn't mother is an installation designed from cardboard boxes used in my last move from Manhattan to Queens (1996).

WHAT IS HOME, IF IT ISN’T MOTHER 1996 Detail & Installation view

PRESS: The Bronx Museum the Arts

MEET THE ARTISTS: BARBIE & KEN, 1996

Barbie Fantasy House ( 52” x 37” x 17”), audio piece (about 10 min long)

Meet the artist Barbie and Ken is an audio installation, which portrays these two cliché characters, which also have cliché roles: Barbie is the Struggling Artist, and Ken is the Art Dealer.

Their large smooth pink plastic house contains an art studio (squeezed in the bedroom) and a gallery ("Ken's").  The voices of various artists, talking about art making, about their lives and experiences, are fragmented and manipulated to become the voices of Barbie and Ken.

Played against the sound of disco music, these voices demonstrate how private space and public space blend and melt into a pulp scenario. This piece cynically attempts to questions the motives behind artmaking and its relation to market, media and fashion.

WHEN WE CONCLUDE THAT I HAVE POWER, YOU HANG ME, 1995
Drawings and photographs framed in wood and Plexiglas, hoola hoop, foam balls

The heavy statement of When we conclude that I have power you hang me takes place in a play ground, in a circus-like scenario. Combining my own images and those made by children, this installation re-incarnates a childhood scenario where a sweet play turns into an uninhibited violent act, so complete unto itself.

WHEN WE CONCLUDE THAT I HAVE POWER, YOU HANG ME,  1996 Installation view: Drawings and photographs framed in wood and Plexiglas, hoola hoop, foam balls

DESTROY ME WITH WORDS, 1995
Silk screened text and images on 18 floor mats (18” x 26” each)

Destroy Me with Words is a floor piece containing 19 floor mats silk-screened with text and images. The intricate play of pain/pleasure "Abuuuuuuuuuse me, and what will i do withis desire" echoes it’s meaning in the undetermined status of this piece (is it art or is it a usable object? Are the labor and production qualities put into it meant to be de/valued?) and is activated while people stepping on the piece put into question the preciousness of this art object.

During the crowded opening at the GenArt Art Market show, where it was exhibited and soon after covered with dirty footsteps, the curators rushed to protect the piece by marking its borders with red tape. Not intervening with either reaction,
I found them both to be beneficial in questioning the way this piece should be perceived and experienced.

WEAR FOR ME, 1995

An installation composed of silkscreened prints (30” x 44” each), silkscreened text on male and female clothing, light.

Wear for me is based on a poem which uses a highly metaphoric language to depict a sexual fantasy. Quotes of this poem appear on various pieces of clothing, becoming attributes of the missing body . The fabric is slightly manipulated, stuffed, sewn into. Weaving together fantasy, language, and tactility, this installation mainly speaks about desire.

CAPTURED, 1993
A site specific installation piece designed for the Whitney ISP’s dark room, containing photographs, a video piece, broken paints and glasses, coffee, text, slide projector and bread.

Captured was exhibited at the Whitney Independent Study Program. It pushes the borders of vulgarity and attempts to touch upon the complex fabric of racism and militarism in Israel.

Using my own experiences in the army and some insights which I had while shooting a short documentary in the West Bank for the purpose of this installation, I explored the notion of power, and my own complicity with it (as an Israeli citizen, as a soldier, and as an artist armed with a video camera).

The following installations are based on my writings. Short poems and prose have been translated and employed in different pieces, while exploring the flirtatious and often troublesome relationship between a word and a sign.