WHAT WILL YOU DRINK

Curators: Sigal Manor Banga & Meirav Shai

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As a daughter of Holocaust survivors, Debbie Oshrat’s practice is deeply influenced by the number that was tattooed on her late mother’s arm in Auschwitz. The appearance of the aging arm sent her on a quest to find a special creative surface, whose texture and colors will be as similar as possible to the skin of the mature body, and will allow her to touch and unravel the conspiracy of silence. This is how she came to work on used tea bags.

Debbie stitches the used tea bags into a patchwork tapestry, on which she works in mixed media combining embroidery, painting, and drawing. With that she revives old materials, corresponding with the world of craft in the ancient language of women, and modernizing them.

For the exhibition, she created a new piece dedicated to Queen Shlomtzion (Salome Alexandra), the feminist Hasmonean queen. The queen of Hasmonean Judea, who took the throne after the death of her husband Alexander Jannai, reigned between 76-67 BC; her capital was the ancient city of Modiin. Debbie embroidered the piece on used coffee bags in which coffee beans are shipped from Costa Rica to the port of Ashdod, which served as one of the ancient ports of Hasmonean Judea.