Hila Cohen־Schneiderman is an Israeli curator, winner of the Curation Award granted by the Ministry of Culture of the year 2021. Since 2018 she has served as the head curator of MoBY: Museums of Bat Yam. Cohen-Schneiderman specializes in site-specific projects based on artistic research. She often examines platforms through which art and culture establishments can preserve cognitive and organizational flexibility and collaborate with municipal systems. Besides her occupation as a curator, Cohen-Schneiderman is a professor in the School of Visual Theater, in Bezalel Art Academy, in Shenkar College, and the Institute for Israeli Art.
“I am concerned by the rupture formed between art and society, by the loss of the ceremonial power of the museum and the mind-altering power of art. The word imagination is perceived as an unrealistic fantasy – which is why it has ceased to be vital to it. Whilst there is another imagination, explained to us by the theologist, philosopher and mystic Henry Corbin (1903-1978). As part of his translations of ancient Islamic writings, Corbin devised a new term, ‘imaginal’ – describing how imagination grants us access to reality in its totality, including the apparent and the invisible, the tangible and the impalpable. A domain through which we could reunite with the world, rather than escape it.”
Maayan Elyakim is an interdisciplinary artist, operating in a wide range of mediums including sculpting, public-sculpting, installation, photography, drawing, and printmaking. His works were presented in multiple exhibitions, museums, galleries, and in public spaces. His solo exhibition “Sun, Dial” is currently displayed in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Maayan teaches in the art departments of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, and Shenkar College.
“When I was 15, I traveled to Tel-Aviv to buy myself a gold necklace. I wore it for 20 years, pondering which pendant I should hang on it. A pendant is a serious matter, a symbol one chooses for oneself. At 35, red spots began to appear on my chest (hemangioma). I paid great attention to them, trying to understand what they were, learning it was nothing; Similar to beauty marks, they are formed as a result of accumulation and expansion of blood vessels beneath the skin. Blood leaving the body, crystallizing into a spot.
During that time, I took interest in gems. I was drawn to Blood Corals: transparent and soft underwater, but when taken out, coming in contact with sunlight, they crystallize and assume their red color.
I decided that the pendant should appear as a blood spot on my chest, a round, red gem, about two millimeters in diameter, blood-coral, encircled by a fine gold frame. The pendant blends amongst the blood spots, disguised as one of them. The gem and the spot were formed in a similar process, leaving their natural, liquid surroundings, and encountering the outside world, crystalizing, forming into a dot, reddening. A gem became a beauty mark.
Behind each of my works, there is a story. My inner world encounters the outside world. I study images, materials, and crafts, with the same thoughtfulness in which I explore my own inner world, imagination, and intuition. My work process is performative, as if I were embodying figures: a historian, a chemist, a librarian, an archeologist. I am interested in the instant in which an image and its manner of materializing, unite – becoming a poetic action, proposing different ways to perceive the world.”
Photo: Doron Rabina