Shahar Marnin-Distelfeld’s research while affiliated with Israel College and other places

This article focuses on the work Seven Private Skies (initiated in 2009) by the Israeli artist, Tsipy Amos Goldstein. This is a series of large panels on which the artist has been painting and embroidering for fourteen years as her main occupation. The aim of the study was to establish the meanings inherent in the work, which is a kind of multi-layered cryptograph, while characterizing it in terms of creativity. The research method combined visual-interpretive analysis with both a narrative-feminist paradigm and with theories from the field of creativity studies. The findings showed that the series “tells” through artistic means the artist’s personal story in a way that matches two definitions: creativity as an experience and creativity as a complexity. The article will discuss the characteristics of the artist and artwork as an experience and then will present the paradoxes distinguishing the work as complex: 1. Order versus chaos; 2. Love and home in the face of disintegration; 3. Cuts versus connections and male versus female; 4. Understandable communication in the face of conflicting messages; 5. Star of David versus the Jewish yellow badge.

Family lives in Palestinian-Arab society in Israel have undergone considerable changes in recent decades. These changes have made it difficult to understand what is meant by family in everyday life. The aim of the present study is to examine the differences in the perception of the family and the image of “a proper family” through drawings created by Palestinian-Arab women and men in Israel (n=106). This can be analyzed as a prism of discussion regarding how people identify what is expected of families. It also raises the question of “family boundaries” in contemporary Palestinian-Arab society in Israel and what is recognized as family relationships. The drawings’ analysis included a set of questions regarding both the content—the theme of the drawing, main situations, characters, and symbols—and the forms, composition, and colors used. Reading the drawings visually illuminated various perceptions of a family as expressed by the participants. This visual content analysis enhances sociological comprehension about the desirable family life in light of gender relationships, family size, and domestic everyday practices which negotiate the global and the local.

This article examines projects of female Arab-Palestinian college art students in the Israeli periphery. The projects focus on the students’ living environment, domestic space, and the transition from their childhood home to the new post-marriage house. They experience this transition, which usually also means leaving the familiar environment of their village of origin for another place, as a significant step that involves mixed feelings of self-fulfillment through marriage and the pain of separating from their childhood homes. A qualitative analysis of the projects relying on a methodology of visual interpretation and interviews with the students revealed their ambivalent attitude towards this step. Findings showed that the projects reflect a gendered geography related to the perception of domestic space. The students express an intermediate position of “individualized traditionalism,” compatible with their choice to describe the domestic space as embodying a tension between conservative perceptions of marriage and personal reflections on marriage. It was also found that the projects reflect a “low gaze,” a downward view on the students’ part when they observe the world around them through familiar and concrete objects and limited spaces while practicing art. Their observations emanate from both a state of belonging and an external and critical perspective. Their choice of a realistic-naive painting style and depictions devoid of human figures emphasizes the cultural and gender caution they display when expressing their position, echoing the perceptions of their society.

This article examines representations of homemakers and mothers occurring in ads appearing during Mandate Palestine. It is based on comprehensive research of about 150 ads, from dailies, women’s magazines, and manuals published in Hebrew at that time. In all ads, a feminine figure appears as the main character. The ads are analyzed, extracting the meanings inherent in them regarding the role and social status of the Hebrew homemaker, as a key to understanding the worldviews prevalent in the Yishuv. This premise perceives the ads as cultural texts, aiming for an effective communication with their audience. Decoding these ads is done according to theories taken from semiotics and cultural studies in relation to historical knowledge of Hebrew homemakers of the Yishuv. Three dominant ideologies were explored underlying the ads: Hebrew nationalism, modern domesticity, and the ideology of science. The strategies used by advertisers are also discussed, in themselves a significant tool for constructing meaning.

This article examines the works of Israeli woman artist Lilian Weisberger, who creates girlhood images that look naive at first glance but are nonetheless multilayered and radical. This examination of Weisberger’s girlhood images is done here for the first time. Applying the bricolage methodology, the investigation of her artwork is based on a visual analysis, in-depth interviews with Weisberger, and feminist theories relevant to girlhood studies combined with several concepts from the field of psychology. Three series are discussed: the dark-gloomy images, bodiless images, and the group of super-girls and defiant ones. These images represent two substantial parts of the girl’s soul—vulnerability versus intensity—while metaphorically materializing a feminist call for authenticity and wholeness of the girl, and eventually the woman. Weisberger’s art embodies a quest for liberating an inner voice through creation.

This article focuses on the artwork of Israeli artist, Rachel Nemesh, a Second-Generation Holocaust Survivor. The assemblage to be discussed was exhibited in her solo exhibition, One Flesh, in 2020. The corpus analysis will be divided into four themes: (a) The Big Mother – works describing the elderly mother of Nemesh in a monumental manner; (b) Pieta versions – works focusing on bodily scenes of mother and daughter closely tangled; (c) Body-Parts: works showing randomly detached body organs; (d) Domestic Space – the artist's mother in her home. The study will be framed by two main fields: art centering on the Holocaust and feminist ideas focusing on mother-daughter relationships. Theoretical and visual examination will be enhanced by interviews with the artist aiming at profoundly decoding her artwork, claimed to resonate a feminine artistic language. An attempt to formulate an original interpretation of Holocaust Second-Generation's art, combined with a feminist point of view, will be made here. Rachel Nemesh's artwork is being investigated here for the very first time.

This study investigates ‘amateurish’ visual artists and their work, exhibited at the Upper-Floor Gallery (UFG) at the Memorial Center of Kiryat Tivon, Israel. Out of thirty such artists, three were found to form a sub-category - the ‘challengers’, due to the ways they challenge boundaries within the art world. All UFG artists were studied both through in-depth interviews and through their artwork, and were defined as ‘serious-leisure’ artists, instead of simply ‘amateurs’ (Marnin-Distelfeld and Dorchin 2020) according to the theory of Serious-Leisure-Perspective (Stebbins 2015). The ‘challengers’ can be differentiated from the rest of the group, having succeeded in developing their artistic performance and exhibiting their art in venues beyond peripheral galleries, and by better understanding the art scene in general. Two have a partly relevant academic background in art or art-related studies, which contributes to their artistic choices. Their art possesses three crucial properties, which also characterize ‘professional’ art: it is semantically unstable and complex in meaning, it deals with socio-political issues present in contemporary cultural discourse and it is made of mixed media, with original combinations of materials and techniques. All three characteristics embody an artistic approach compatible with current curation trends, thus placing the ‘challengers’ away from ‘amateurism’ and closer to ‘professionalism’.