Glilor – The Red Sea

And so it happened, and it is all true.

This work was conceived thanks to an invitation I received to present a piece of mine at the Yanko Dada museum to mark 120 years to the birth of the museum’s founder and one of the leaders of the Dada movement. Like the other artists I was invited to address one of his paintings: The Red Sea. I found myself standing in front of Marcel Yanko’s painting without being able to find an opening, not even a crack, through which I could enter and roam among the brush-strokes and outlines laid down by the artist on the canvas. From this dead end I found myself spreading my wings, and from the bird’s-eye-view I could see an image where his figure was looking back at me, Marcel Yanko’s life and work. At that moment the door opened for me, I could see the path I was to walk. On the way I collected feelings of empathy, excitement and joy for being given the opportunity to pay homage to this man.

Here are the materials that make up this work:

For 30 years of my life I walked a different path. As a trained Social Worker I searched to ease people’s woes, and on the way I met those who shared with me their stories. Mostly stories of a life violently crashed against the rocks of devastation that only man could devise, those of wars and terror. Later I was to meet also fragments of life rocked by the forces of nature itself, without leaving a trace behind, covering everything with chaos. Next to all of these, I witnessed how people were able to realize their amazing powers.

Thus Marcel Yanko’s path and mine, several generations and two continents apart, inter-twine.

Just like him I feel a strong urge to change the present. To take apart parts of it and put back together again, to effect reality so I can collect my breath. Marcel Yanko and his friends dared to dream f a better world, tried to realize this with the art they created. But larger forces were at play in the arena of life. Their movement died down but left its mark.

And from these seeds of though came about my work. Retracing the phases of its birth I am struck by how every part of it is filled with feeling.

I constructed the kaleidoscope in front of you from a 5 inch sewage pipe, a pipe whose entire purpose is to drain our man-made sewage. I bought it one Saturday in a shop in Wadi-NisNas. Following assembly instructions I found on the Internet, I trapped the light shattering on to the mirrors, so it could wander around between the colors and lines laid down by Marcel Yanko on the canvas, skipping and jumping between 12 pieces I cut out of “The Red Sea”. I set the Kaleidoscope at the top of a stand I found lying against a trash-bin in our street, waiting to be removed. Chance meets intention.

I invite the observer to hold the Kaleidoscope with one hand and turn it left and right with the other, rocking “The Red Sea”, breaking down the present order of things, changing it, hoping maybe for the magic produced by the touch. And maybe not. I leave this up to each and every one of you. Because you can also choose not to touch, not to try and change, not to rock the despair or test the hope. Risk disappointment…

I would like to talk about the light as well. What a wonderful decision it was to allow my work to stand against the view that Marcel Yanko chose to plant his life’s work in. To trap the rays of Mediterranean light unique to those whose eyes have long gazed at it with the other softer light of Europe. As one born here, I find myself with the passing of the years asking to dim the brightness of the light around me. Everything is too bright, you can’t look away, too often the brilliancy reflected is blinding, painful. Before I finish a word about the name I gave it: Glilor. It’s a product of the Academy of the Hebrew language that sought to make local sounds coming from far away. ‘Over there’ it’s Kaleidoscope, here it’s Glilor. Have you noticed?! Not Glil-‘Or. An interesting choice. Maybe those people in the Academy already know the rest of the story, know that there’s no place in the world where we can really go so that the light wouldn’t blind us, or so that darkness wouldn’t fall upon us.

And so our paths crossed, and so I met you, Marcel Yanko.