Pictures from a woman's life

• Published date: 16 March 2024
• Author: ILANA CARMELI LANNER
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The works in "Pictures from a Woman's Life" reflect the artist's voyage during her life as far as dealing with femininity, specifically the complexity between intimacy and loneliness. Transitions and connections between the needle that wounds the fabric and its "cleanliness" produce a complex system that is based on inherent dependence on various materials used, which strive for independence but merge into a complete collage

Through careful coloring, she creates a delicate play between the world of fashion and the non-glamorous world of difficulty and struggle. Sometimes the embroidery appears as a surface of color, and sometimes it is there as an implicit color drawing saturated with movement. A superposition of backgrounds in "natural" colors are united by a thread that sometimes tells a story and evokes a memory. She investigates materials and brings them into symbolic products: Oshrat has always chosen the genesis of her femininity and its meaning.

The genesis of femininity

She embroiders stories in tea, draws, renders, paints, and embroiders on used tea bags (Ready Made, recycling and sustainability). In her own words: "This is how I manage to revive old material and connect small details into a greater whole, which is bigger than the sum of its parts.

"I embroider my life path, correspond with the craft world, with ancient female crafts, that echo the language of the 'Great Mother.' This is how I give birth and create my new contemporary and actual art."

Her artworks convey a kind of longing, innocence, and an invitation to introspection, a spotlight on mystery, a secret that needs to be figured out, something that requires self-searching.

The process of formation of life and birth is also given a place in this exhibition. She says. "It is an important component of my life as a woman...physically when giving birth to children, and spiritually when discovering myself, 'give birth to myself,' and face the inner and outer reality every time anew."

As a Reiki master, she combines her knowledge and connects it to her art: "As women, we touch many people. We know our palm is a kind of sensor. Whether in a hug or a pat or just a touch on the shoulder, we take a reading of the person we touch. If we are connected in any way to La Que Sabe, we know what another human feels by sensing them...