Wake-up Call / Dori Shechtel Zanger

Dori Shechtel Zanger

Curator: Taly Cohen Garboz

Opening: Thursday, 10.6.2021, 19:30

An online gallery talk: Wednesday 7.7.21, 19:30– Registration

Closing: Saturday, 24.7.2021, 14:00

“The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality.” (A quote made by John Fitzgerald Kennedy)

Dori Shechtel Zanger is a narrative ceramic artist.  She sculpts figures of children.  Their faces are round, and their bodies look soft.  She works with white clay and uses ceramic pigments for the drawings.

At first glance the children appear to be playing innocently children’s games but the drawings on their bodies reveal a different picture, of the real world around them.  Their security is fragile, who is protecting them and how will they protect their children? Are their toys, games, work tools or war tools? Is the sickle that appears among the work tools there to harvest wheat? Or is it  a threatening sickle of the angel of death?

Dori Shechtel Zanger arrived in Israel in 1983 from Argentina, after years of living in fear of the Military Junta. She studied in the Ceramic and Glass Design Department at Bezalel under the guidance of Ziona Shimshi. 

Now, years later after establishing her home and giving her children an education of values, she looks with disappointment as all her beliefs clash with the political reality, the militant atmosphere, the ecological neglect, and the lack of solidarity. 

Her ceramic works tell her story of resistance and the story of other parents like her.

Taly Cohen Garboz, May 2021