The exhibition One – One | Reut Rabuah and Shelly Shavit, brings together two artists that examine memory, survival, and intergenerational narratives through body and clay. The exhibition explores how personal and material experiences—bereavement, migration, violence, trauma —manifest in the body, the landscape, and everyday objects, and how they are translated and transformed within an exhibition space where the personal and the social operate simultaneously.
Reut Rabuah is conscious of the clay and aware of the form in its state of transformation. Alongside unglazed, cracked clay sculptures that preserve the marks of her hand, Rabuah presents a body of two-dimensional works: paintings depicting rocks in shades of black and faceless abstract figures. The use of two types of paint—oil and watercolor—creates a palette of hues that conveys contradictory and disorienting sensations.
The figures, referred to as “Rooster People,” are abstract hybrid creatures with elongated necks and bodies resembling inflated skirts. They form a kind of “community,” generating a sense of humanity where it is lacking. Scattered across the paper as individuals or as groups, the figures are trapped in helplessness and an inability to contain the whole. Between the heaviness of the rocks and the lightness of watercolor, Rabuah presents an unstable body, searching for its place in space.
Shelly Shavit’s practice emerges from a crisis of trust in the concept of home and place, examining the split between the domestic narrative she grew up with and the reality in which she now operates. She investigates the private sphere in relation to society, asking whether free choice exists in the face of ingrained patterns of everyday life. Since October 7 and her move to another country, questions that once lingered in the background have become part of daily experience. The recurring question, “Where are you from?”, sharpens the tensions between personal identity and national narrative, between the notion of immigration and migration, between belonging and choice.
The objects she creates move between the disciplined soldier and a dreaming woman, between cautious survival and free expression. Shavit employs everyday imagery drawn from military contexts, whose civilian presence normalizes a state of ongoing conflict. Removed from their original context, the objects become stereotypes: soft fists with ceramic wings rise atop inverted balloon columns; a ceramic Israeli army canteen is reduced to the size of a palm, wrapped in a handmade thermal cover with personal embroidery. This act of miniaturization brings the military charge closer to the intimate object without diminishing its force, illustrating how survival becomes an everyday material—accepted as natural and normalized.
The joint exhibition creates a relationship between the static and the dynamic, between the individual and the collective, allowing viewers to dwell within fragility without seeking to repair it. Are there survival patterns that drive us? Do we act out of personal choice, or from a mechanism of survival?
Reut Rabuah and Shelly Shavit have co-curated the Small Gallery since 2022. This exhibition establishes a shared curatorial space in which each artist influences and shapes the other’s discourse and material practice, enabling a common language between their works and narratives.
Reut Rabuah is an artist living and working in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. She holds a B.F.A. from the Department of Ceramic and Glass Design, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem (2010–2014), and studied in the Curatorial and Research Program of the Department of Arts and Visual Culture, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be’er Sheva (2018–2020). She is a recipient of the “First Studio” Fellowship at the Benyamini Contemporary Ceramics Center, Tel Aviv (2014–2015), and participated in a residency at Museo Carlo Zauli, Faenza, Italy (2019). She has exhibited in group exhibitions and solo shows.
Shelly Shavit is an artist and curator living and working in Greece. She holds an M.Des. in Design from the Integrated Design department at the Holon Institute of Technology (HIT, 2022), and a B.F.A. from the Department of Ceramic and Glass Design, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem (2005–2009). She also completed a certificate program in Animation at the School of Communication and Digital Arts, The Open University (2011–2012).
The small gallery
Two artists curating one another
Opening: Thursday, 5.2.2026, 19:30
Gallery talk: Friday, 13.3.2026, 11:30
Closing: Saturday, 21.3.2026, 14:00
