"There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism"
Walter Benjamin
A knitting journey. A pilgrimage without a god. A demonstration without a sign or a claim.
About a year ago, inspired by my late mother’s crochet work, and driven by the Russian war on Ukraine, I created a work for the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, named 'Preventive Knitting'.
See more here.
This work, my encounter with people around it, and the horrific war taking place now in Gaza and Israel, push me to re-create the project in the streets ,outside of any artistic establishment, context or boundaries. This time I plan to travel between countries, knitting crochet style on barbed wire with white thread. Just sitting barefoot, knitting and meeting.
This action is about definitions, borders and fences and about the need to melt and confuse them again and again so we can become humans.
I decided to start the knitting journey in Spain at the city of Portbou, where Walter Benjamin committed suicide.
In the old tradition of pilgrimage, the project will be based only upon the help of humans on my way .
Who I am
In Athens on the day of Kathara Deutera, Clean Monday, the day that marks the beginning of the 40 days fast before Easter. The sky above all the hills of the city is full of kites. On my way back home, down one hill, I see a tall and well dressed father walking, holding a small plastic neat- golden kite. A few meters behind him walks a child – a boy or a girl, I cannot say – and just takes his/her time, wonder and wandering over the stones and the plants of the spring that has just started.
When I try to describe myself, the words wonderer/wanderer come to mind. Wandering around and into things. This wonder has taken me, and still takes me, on different journeys. From working with autistic people to teaching movement to actors, directors, and other performers. From founding activist groups (“Bela Doeget” ,”Black Laundry”) to locking myself in rooms for long periods of meditation. My wonder has led me to teach people from kindergarten to universities, and made me touch people and take care of those who suffer pain or illnesses, at times even on their death bed.
My wonderings have made me a painter who tries to transform a chemical reaction into meaning, and an artist who tries to create beauty and sense out of this chaotic and horrifying world.
Does “who I am” mean what I did? Or perhaps who I am means how I react, how I meet.
… The original meaning of the word "wonderful" seems to be hiding in plain sight: “full of wonder.”
