Pictures from a woman's life

Curator: Ilana Carmeli Lanner

Public Relations: Michal Sadan

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The solo exhibition of multidisciplinary artist Debbie Oshrat, is not by chance, being held during the International Women's Month, deals with various aspects of her life as a woman.

Debbie is a renaissance of culture, of aesthetics, of overwhelming beauty, and attention to smallest details. She is a classic, and she conducts an intimate feminine and private conversation with every viewer of her artworks.

The current exhibition is a temporary summary as Oshrat pulls threads of lines that branch and tangle out from her. Voyage of development, voyage of childhood and adulthood, female voyage, emotional voyage, and voyage of pain.

The exhibition is like a projector which lights events of joy and sadness, events of childhood and mourning, events of maturity and adolescence, events of presence and ceremonies.

The artworks reflect the artist's voyage during her life, as far as dealing with femininity, and 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.

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 The artworks raise questions of fullness versus emptiness, of vitality versus wilting, hidden touches of grief, weather conscious or partially unconscious.

She investigates materials and brings them into symbolic products: Debbie has always chosen the genesis of her femininity and its meaning. Introverted and extroverted femininity (as opposed to her own being), which is reflected in various cultural and ritual aspects, and women’s strength and aesthetics, throughout her life voyage.

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She embroiders stories in Tea, draws, renders, paints, and embroiders on used tea bags (Ready Made, recycling and sustainability), and 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.

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The process of formation of life and birth is also given a place in this exhibition, and 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 Debbie 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 with our palm. For some, information in a form of images and sometimes even words come to them, informing them of the feeling state of others. One might say there is a form of radar in the hands. Hands are not only receivers but transmitters . . . This is women’s knowledge through the centuries, handed down mother to daughter."

From: "Women Who Run with the Wolves" – Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, by Clarissa Pincola Estes.

 

Some artworks presented in the exhibition were created following a painful personal experience of the family. Oshrat bravely reveals the life story of her daughter who suffers from post-trauma due to mental abuse she experienced from her commanding officer during her military national service.

Artworks were created following poems, letters, and sentences from her daughter’s personal diary and were processed into pieces of art.

"The voice is the daughter’s voice, and the hands are the hands of the mother."

A unique artwork that will be presented is a kind of a blanket intended to wrap and embrace Noga with energies of love and warmth from every one whose heart was touched by her story, and shared a text, a symbol or a drawing that were used to assemble a large quilt, over 3 meters long.

 

Symbols of dresses presented in the exhibition are used as a cover for beautiful and better days, and as an aid to exit from an “inside snailing” into the outside world.

Debbie says: "I see life as a combination of both and both . . . both pain and joy, both bitter and sweet. To me, a dress symbolizes something feminine, soft, positive, beautiful, and liberating.

 

As part of the theme "Growing Wings and Flying Free", Oshrat expresses her longing to rise above the difficulties and the complexities of every day’s life, . . . to break free and fly away.