Series - bunkers

Project name: Bunkers

When did the project start? Project May 2021

My bunker series includes works in different techniques and sizes that correspond to each other on the subject of the physical and mental bunker.

My bunker series includes works in different techniques and sizes: ink, acrylic, clay sculpture, linoleum prints and a poem.

A different and challenging period has passed over us in the last year and a half. A virus raged in the world that felt like it was always a few steps ahead of us, natural disasters that occurred in many regions of the world, even in tiny Israel, which is not disconnected from this planet, as much as we sometimes get confused thinking it is.

To all this was added local politics that created tension and divided the people, and of course a country surrounded by enemies. We also "won" a tense political situation that put us in airtight rooms and shelters. When the routine started to go wrong, I remember telling myself "China is far away" and calming my children. All this feeling of near and far and disasters here and there in the end remind us that we are all sitting on the same round ball.

For a moment when it seemed that things were taking on the form of routine and the struggle with "fires" was quiet for a few moments, these bunkers emerged from my mind as if they were waiting for the right moment to allow themselves to come out, and they came out one after the other, sometimes the waiting creates a chain of succession that must be broken.

On the door of my room at the age of 18, "Hagit's bunker" was written. A bunker is not just a physical state that we find ourselves in, it is a mental state. In the case of the year and a half that have passed, each of us's bunker was different and the experience was indeed collective but also very personal. There was a moment when we realized that the lockdowns we were put under at home caused nature to have its say and return to the cities, animals that emerged in neighborhoods and reclaimed the areas deserted by humans, plants that waited for us blooming when we finally went outside and an amazing cleanup of the waste we were used to, there was something different in the air that made it possible to breathe inside the city, less sooty, less crowded, a feeling of freshness and cleanliness.

But for this moment we had to stop for a moment, enter our physical and mental bunkers and look inside and only then come out and look outside and discover what nature knew before us that with all the understanding of humanity, nature is above all. We are part of it and not not part of us when we decide to be the masters of this globe.

Nature gives us a lot and when we only take, it also takes back.

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The process of the works:

The order of creation of the works is meaningful, each work made it possible to express something different on the subject, while together they have a sequence similar to a plot sequence.

In the three ink works that I created (without prior thought that there would be several works on the subject) you can see the sequence of my thought and the process of understanding the bunker experience.

- In the first work, a lonely, closed bunker that nature closes its way and in a moment covers its small openings, in the second work, Several bunkers and in the third work the bunker opens up to nature and becomes part of it.

- The painting of the bunker on the canvas is already the growth of two bunkers together with the tree on it, they arise with it as part of nature.

- The sculpture also constitutes fertile ground for the growth of bunkers, only this time the woman's body is integrated into their growth and is the one who holds them together with the tree.

The sculpture is made of clay that has been coated with primer (base color), painted with acrylic and covered with varnish, placed in a recycled frame of canvas filled with soil, the canvas frame I found on the street when the canvas itself was cut and is no longer there.

The contrast between the clay, which is usually a warm material with a natural appearance of earth, which is presented here as a plastic product, smooth and shiny, and the earth from which it arises within the frame of the painting from which it emerged, emphasizes the dissonance of our humanity that is moving away from its nature to places that ultimately force us all to find cover. A woman's body that lifts and becomes part of the bunker's spaces.

- In the text that accompanies the series, I describe the process, which was given to me with love by a woman who was very important to me.

Later in the series, the linoleum prints that detach the bunker from the tree on which it grows and combine it back together.