Nomi: The first time I saw your work was in 1993 in the exhibition “Quiet Oppositions”, curated by Ruti Direktor at the Sarah Levi Gallery. I was looking for works for the exhibition “Beauty 1995” that I curated at the Antea Gallery, and I thought that your works “talked to” the subject of the exhibition – the complexity of women’s preoccupation with beauty.

 

Orna: Participating in the “Beauty 1995” exhibition was very meaningful for me because it allowed me to examine the concept of beauty, and the expression “good taste”, which is a very important subject for me. In my experience, beauty is also a threat. In my works I paint a little girl in a red dress, even though that’s considered as “bad taste”, even though it’s forbidden.

 

N: Forbidden?

 

O: If you go into the categories of good taste and bad taste, there are lots of things that are forbidden. If you wear clothes of a specific color, for instance, that’s considered bad taste. In the house where I grew up, red is connected with crossing boundaries and even to promiscuity. .

 

N: How did you being painting?

 

O: My mother came here from Europe, and she only likes “beautiful things”, and here there was only sand and dirt. To my mind – she had a culture, people around her knew how to paint because they grew up in a cultured milieu. By comparison, I felt that I had absolutely no culture. I feel that I’m the product of this place, that has no proper cultural tradition, and this was already apparent in primary school. When I understood that I’d never be able to paint “properly”, I began a process of going back to the butterfly I painted at the age of ten, eleven. In fact, I went back to the paintings of my childhood and drew on images from them.

N: The butterfly paintings sometimes really do look childish, but at other times – like drawings from a biology textbook.

 

O: In my works there are several central images, the butterfly is one of them. There are also birds and fish and horses. In general, all the images are actually of the same thing, they symbolize the world for me. By comparison, the little girl represents everybody in the world. I paint a girl because I’m a woman, and sometimes a queen, because the queen is the fulfillment of all the dreams. At some stage, I understood that with these images I can express everything, and I don’t need more than that. I see this minimalism as sufficient.

 

N: Were there times when you abandoned art?

 

O: I always felt that in painting I have a lot of strength, and then suddenly, at the beginning of the 90s, I felt that this strength had disappeared. I think it disappeared because I got a fright, I was afraid. Suddenly I was made to feel I was doing something wrong. I didn’t understand the world I was dealing with.      

 

N: How did that change?

 

O: Slowly, slowly, my strength came back, I wasn’t scared any more, and I went back to painting what I know. I think there was a stage when I wanted to be like other people, to enter a world I knew I had no hope of belonging to. When I gave up, I stopped searching and went back to painting.

 

N: And what’s the difference between works?

 

O: I think I relate to the works like a diary. Every page, every painting, is a chapter, a section of the diary. That’s what’s good about a diary - it’s never finished. That’s why I don’t prefer one work over another. I can’t see the difference between them. Sometimes I choose the less good works for a specific exhibition – why not like a bad painting?

For me, it’s only temporary, this business of good and bad. In my experience, that estimate changes a great deal over time. 

 

N: You told me that your experience in the Print Workshop was very meaningful for you.

 

O: Yes, it was very different from what I’d known before. In the studio I was received so kindly and warmly. Even though I knew nothing about technique, I felt that I really didn’t have to worry. In addition, that was the first time I felt the need to analyze my work, the activity that is usually so intuitive. All of a sudden I had to ‘dissect’ each section, each color, each patch, and think about how to re-combine them. The surprise for me was that, in spite of all the differences in the process, the print was still my creation in the end. 

 

 

Translation by Rena Minkoff