Inbar Galili-Shachter
"Objections" is the name chosen for of this year's annual final art exhibit at the Kerem Institute.
Artist Etty Abergil, who teaches at Kerem, is the exhibition's curator. "Objection, as a motif, is basic to the creative process. Casting a doubt, the need to understand and examine things from different points of view...
"Objections" is an exhibition that interrupts, for a short moment, the developing creative process of its participants. Some of them are Kerem students who came to fulfill an artistic yearning; some are artists studying towards their teacher certificate at Kerem who were invited to participate in the exhibition."
Lillian Cohen, who is completing her teacher's certification studies this year, participated in the exhibition.
Lillian was raised in a southern Parisian suburb and attended the Yavneh School. She and her parents immigrated to Israel when she finished school. Her family suffered a harsh tragedy when, two years later, her father drowned in the sea.
Immigration, the dismantling of an old building, the beginnings of a new home's construction, picking up the pieces at the family and personal levels, and her acclimatization in Israel - at all levels - are expressed in her work, which deals with the Freudian concept of the uncanny. The concept expresses the alien feeling one can encounter at times in the most familiar and intimate of situations.
Lillian attempts to make the uncanny present by wrapping various household objects in the cellophane tape of which so much is used in moving house; preserving, on the one hand, but "freezing", on the other, it packages in order to deliver and to allow for continuity. Lillian's father peers through a family photograph, also packaged. As is his perfume bottle, half full, which impacts our sense of smell. The next generation is with him; Lillian's son, born during the year, is also part of the family tradition. His doll was also packed, and hung, and the sound of his recorded voice impacts our sense of hearing.
Etty Abergil writes:
Lillian Cohen has constructed a large personal saga, a world that moves between the homey to the un-homey and the alienated, and that creates a tension between cultures; it moves between Paris and Jerusalem, between parts of her identity and that of other immigrants when they make aliyah to Israel. She strums on the emotional depths of memory, loss and adaptation in relocation with great courage. The gap is expressed in the tension between the Hebrew and French languages, in the alienation between the familiar and the foreign, between what is comprehensible and what is not, between that which is stable and fixed and that which can be transferred, between what can be packed and what must be left behind, and that which Lillian offers and distributes for the taking. The concept of "home" and its deep layers is present in her work in all modes. A deep dimension in the work leads to the image of mother as home, to a protective presence that is found at the heart of Lillian's emotional piece, in which she very courageously touches upon her identity as a daughter and as a mother as well, and which represents the essence of the experience of home and of family.
Lillian creates a home-like scenario composed of furniture, Hebrew and French books and personal effects laden with personal meaning that at first glance appears to be an invitation to rest and settle in, but that is simultaneously packaged and perishable. She annuls a world and creates a world, closes and opens associative cycles that move between homes, between the place in memory and the concrete location."
