Home / Group Exhibition

Woman makers, Rina Peleg’s Studio, Umm El-Fahm Gallery

Participants: Noor Mhajna, Ruba Mhameed, Maysa Msalhh, Yamama Msalhh, Sondos Mhajna, Suzanah Masoud, Anaam Mhajna, Nadwa Kabha, Marlen Gazal

Curator: Einav Baranes Eliasov

Opening:  Thursday, 09/09/21, 18:00-22:00

Gallery Talk: Wednesday, 13/10/21, 19:30, For registration

Closing:  Saturday, 16/10/21, 14:00

The ceramic artist, Rina Peleg, returned from America after 40 years and established her studio in the Umm El-Fahm Art Gallery. She works in her studio and teaches the women of the area.  The connection between the local woman and the artist is unique and beyond the learning aspect, it is a meeting place and place of empowerment for women, while being exposed to the art world in lsrael and abroad. 

In the past, the Wadi Ara area was famous for ceramics and the skills and knowledge were passed on from generation to generation and local families lived on the income from making and selling pots.  With modernized living and the industrial revolution traditional pottery gradually disappeared from the area. 

The Umm El-Fahm Art Gallery is training a generation of women to return to traditional Arab crafts like ceramics and weaving.  The gallery, in cooperation with Rina Peleg, have created a “toolbox” to provide ceramic making skills, technical and professional knowledge and at the same time to return to traditional ceramics with individual expression of each participant.

Since 2014 the women of the workshop create sculptural and functional objects that are sold to the visitors at the gallery.  The women are partners in the making, marketing, and sales of their handwork.

About the exhibition: 

Home is a place that holds and carries over years family memories, language, as well as memories from childhood and youth.  “Home” is also a concept the raises with each person endless feelings, emotions, memories as well as concrete and abstract associations that interconnected.

What is “home”?  Is it a physical marked territory or a mental state?  Is it a place that protects and gives a feeling of stability and peace or does it destabilize and relate to an uneasiness? What makes a “place” “Home”? A building? Its contents? Specific objects? People? Sounds? Smells? What does “home” represent for each one and what connections are made?

The Benyamini Center invited the women of the ceramic studio in Umm El-Fahm to exhibit their works in the heart of the Tel Aviv art scene.  This is an invitation for a multi-cultural dialogue, about centre and periphery, about gender, and about the personal interpretation expressed in the exhibition which examines the essence of the concept of “home” from various viewpoints.

The women participating in the exhibition expose personal stories, memories, sad experiences, joy, longing, in the works that are made with particular care, and so expose their unique individual world of content.

 

Thanks to Avner Singer for his technical guidance and support at Givat Haviva.