The exhibition Refuge brings together the jeweler Naama Ben Porat and the glass artist Yael Volch who both deal with the personal space after a crisis. The starting point for Ben Porat is the withdrawal into the home following trauma – the inward movement into the intimate and familiar space. From this place she turns to drinking tea as a metaphor for comfort and through this examines the teabag itself. She destructs and rebuilds it as a method to examine absorption processes, change and dedication. Vloch focuses on the moment after the crises, and the way in which the body, the soul and relationships react to shock. Her works examine the split of the soul – survival between the home environment and the outside world.
Naama created a series that follows the experience of mourning and sadness in the private space. She examines the tensions between the individual and loneliness and the collective emotion of living a common reality. The teabag is the central motif in her work – a common object that moves between solid and liquid, absorbing the surroundings and changing the close environment.
With the dismantling of the teabag Ben Porat questions what home is, not only as a place of comfort but also as the place that is charged with historical and political processes. She questions: what is home? Who built it? Questions that are charged with new meaning when considering the historical connection between producing tea, the status and the meaning that it carries. The European tea ceremonies, as refined as they may be, are steeped in a history of colonial exploitation and the inequality of global economy. The tag on the teabag, a small and seemingly unimportant item, changes the status. It makes its way from the tea plantations in the far east, produced by impoverished workers to the elegant tea tables in the west. The branded tag is evidence of this journey and through this Ben Porat shows the home not only as an intimate space but as a place of hidden identities, a silent and charged arena of western superiority, status symbols and the deep gap between comfort and sources of exploitation.
Through her jewelry series, delicate objects and raw materials – glass, textiles, paper and silver – Ben Porat investigates the tension between the personal and the collective. The group of ‘used’ glass teabags, similar and different, are setup to imitate/remind one of an army or tombstones. The chain of transparent teabags exposes the absorption process and the change over time. The materials themselves are sensitive to changes in the environment, absorb and react as the body reacts to the external reality.
Yael Vloch in her works deals with the moment after the crisis, the reaction of the body and the soul. The work examines the way in which the relationship and the soul – survival split exists between the home environment and the outside world. The three-dimensional objects remind one of comics with simple forms that create tension between the scene itself and the deep emotion it holds. The choice of transparent glass emphasizes its commonness, the search for clarity and the fragility. In addition, she forces the viewer to come close to observe the details. The work is especially suited to the gallery shelves which are the frame for the narratives set out as different visual scenes.
The stories are laid out on the shelves. For example – five couples, male and female, face each other, and above their heads are oxygen masks like on airplanes in a state of emergency. The couples react differently, some lean against each other, others raise their hands or try together to extract a mask from the strings. The plane creates a static moment because of an emergency and the body is required to react: is it vigilant? Fallen apart or comforted?
The feeling of static tension between routine and disruption is present in the pair of swimmers, figures of transparent glass with their eyes covered in swimming goggles as they look upwards. They are swimming backstroke but are anchored to the floor, movement that is halted and futile. The tension between crisis and stability is present in the split ground works – a series of rocks laid close to each other and give the feeling of a uniform but split surface. The breaks expose the inner structure of the surface: a net of thin strings, a structure that was part of the ground before the crisis and is now exposed.
Both the artists deal with the body – the human body or the body of material – and the way it changes in extreme conditions. Their works touch on the gap between routine and disruption, between holding on and release, between the ability to maintain stability and the necessity to crack and fall apart.
Naama Ben Porat is a graduate of the the Department of Jewelry and Fashion, (2024) and Yael Vloch a graduate of the Department of Ceramic and Glass Design, (2009) both from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem.
The Small Gallery
Curators: Reut Rabuah, Shelly Shavit
Opening: Thursday, 29/5/25, 19:30
Gallery talk: Friday, 11/7/2025, 11:30
Closing: Saturday, 12/7/25, 14:00
