Dganit Zauberman
Artist Statement
Memories, life experiences, intuitive processes, and curiosity drive my work.
Early in my life, informed by my upbringing in a Kibbutz, I observed the importance of land as not only a source of life but also as a source of struggle, separation, and death.
Now, with the current political and environmental climate, the subject of land continues to be essential to my work; it has, if anything, become even more important in recent years.
I pull from my personal and emotional experiences to create my work, trying to combine what is felt and tangible along with the intangible.
My process is like a journey of discovery: I start with just the paint – intuitively setting it down. The paint then inspires me to construct a “place”— a resemblance of a landscape, both actual and imagined, that aim to present an idea of land that is composed of multiple layers. These layers include the cycle of life and death, ancestry of the land, and a connection between society, history, and geology.
I focus not only on land’s physical “being” — the form, texture, and feel, along with the process by which it forms, moves, and erodes—but also land as a source of emotional and psychological mood.