KHEN SHISH

Writing under the framing phrase ״the first decade in Khen Shish׳s oeuvre״ is, in itself, an exhilarating undertaking. The simple, decisive fact that I can write from a retroactive perspective, from and facing Shish׳s place as a leading Israeli artist, is a heartwarming fact which should not be taken lightly. The impossible, harsh reality in Israel is especially cruel to those who wish to be artists. Dozens crowd the various art schools, convinced of their calling. But alas, only a few manage to stay focused on the essence, to overcome the ocean of crises, economic difficulties, and creative blocks, and in their 50s boast an impressive body of work, which can be divided into chronological-biographical time zones and artistic styles that undergo transformations, enabling one to ״track changes.״

I met Shish before that ״first decade,״ a decade that began with graduation of art academies, in Shish’s case—Oranim Academic College and Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, She began her career with dense material installations, which spawned ״environments״ rich in meaning: Antea Gallery, Jerusalem; Ami Steinitz Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; the Jerusalem Artists’ House. Shish re–formalized the plastic materials that singled out and informed her childhood and adolescence: the stainless steel tops of the industrial kitchens where her mother worked, the chicken feathers she was tasked to pluck as a child, the coarse salt used in her home to kosher the meat, the sesame seeds, the colorful henna. The eerie installation she constructed back in her second year at Oranim Academic College (1994) was titled Formaldehyde. In the accompanying short text, she wrote: ״This is not a still life. I wanted to talk about text, some said material memory.״ Indeed, the meticulous still-life compositions known from art history, featuring sumptuous carpets, luxurious bowls with exotic fruits, and paintings reflecting the richness of their owners, are worlds apart from Shish’s gut-wrenching space. The Hebrew term for ״installation״ had not yet taken root, and Shish clearly struggled to find the right word for the complex, stratified material setting she created, a piercing environment imbued with ״emotional violence״; an environment whose materiality sends long tentacles, laden with sadness, to the words that Shish herself wrote in a note that is itself a work of art: ״They are all murderers and prisoners / ever so ordinary / stories / stories / I was born in 1970 / One of 6 (six) / a Bedouin in the fields / and my brother died / stories / stories.״ Not a word here is a story, in the sense of fiction. Everything is pure ontological truth. The engagement with biographical materials as plastic art materials, as a cluster of all–but–hard data, is at the core of Shish׳s ongoing artistic project titled Khen–Djamila, on which she worked for years. She met with sons and daughters of immigrants living in the West, and imagined herself as Djamila, an Arab woman from Tunisia. The Jewish–Arab Mizrahi identity dissolved into global Arabism, into the Muslim immigrant suburbs surrounding European cities, into areas of knowledge associated with outsiders, with the marginalized and excluded. Shish was thus able to explore questions of identity and nationalism, origin and skin color. Series of photographs, memories, drawings, word fragments, collages combining photographs of Egyptian movie stars alongside stamps in Hebrew, were presented as the results of the intense impact of that encounter on her inner world and personality, her soul and her art.

The exhibition ״Birthday״ (Hagar Art Gallery, Jaffa, 2003) marked a turning point in Shish׳s practice. The space was filled to the brim with white sheets of paper, on which she drew and inscribed words and sentences. The material itself was now replaced by the format of the simple rectangular white paper which echoed the walls of the ״white cube.״ The tension between the large–scale past installations and the contemporary small format of the paintings, which nevertheless extended over the entire space, charged the gallery with a mesmerizing electro–magnetic field.

In the next phase of Shish׳s work, these will transform into large–scale, monumental oil paintings. The ״breakthrough into painting״ will happen by itself, as it were, following the full acceptance of her identity as a ״painter,״ an identity that had been simmering under the surface for years before materializing via paint and brush, emerging and erupting in its entirety—overflowing, trickling, spilling, storming with full force on the stretched canvas.

The exhibition ״Birthday״ highlighted Shish׳s ability to create pure poetry from a blank sheet of paper, minimal drawing, and cheap stickers. Some of the works surrendered a piercing graphic intensity, reminiscent of Aviva Uri׳s sensitive hand, while others, such as Kosher Babe and Mizrahi Lowlife
created in the early 1990s—which appear as though they were made today and not thirty years ago—attested to a personal ability to touch on taboo.

The exhibition presented a space dominated by subtle beauty, but—as noted by renowned psychologist James Hillman, ״beauty must be raged, or out-raged into life". (1) The gallery walls seemingly sheltered a tangle of erupting, exposed nerves. In the wake of the exhibition, she was brought into the stable of the Tel Aviv–based Alon Segev Gallery. These were the initial steps in the glamorous realm of ״official״ professional art.

Shish created hundreds of drawings, ostensibly seeking to cushion existence, the present moment and the wounded past. Her art was a glaring manifestation of the burning desire to leave a piece of paper, a piece that is a work of art, as a record of an experience, a day, a thrill—as exemplified by Today I was Moved to Tears by a Rothko Painting; art that is a record of a heart-rending attempt to extract a moment of meaning from the stormy, all–pervading, all–consuming reality of life.

Her work in the group exhibition ״Present Now: Omanut Haaretz 5״ (Reading Power Station Compound, Tel Aviv, 2006) also left a lasting impression. Onto a bluish TV screen (a quintessential element in Shish’s creative oeuvre, a recurring reference to the television as the major pleasure and entertainment machine of the lower classes in Israel) she attached a black–and–white self–portrait photograph, which she corrupted: gouging out the eyes, gagging the mouth. The effect was overwhelming. It was ״Khen Shish׳s theatre of cruelty,״ an emotional–formal blend that would recur in many variations throughout her career. Little by little, a repertoire of symbols crystallized, layers of meaning that would accumulate over the years and enrich the painterly signs in context. Shish’s paper poetry, the universe of signs she succeeded in creating, gave rise to a private, personal, almost idiosyncratic world, and yet one that immediately communicates with the viewer, without inhibitions or restraints, because Shish’s work emanates from the heart, the heart which is the eye—two key symbols in her oeuvre. ״The heart׳s characteristic action is not feeling, but sight.״ (2) Shish sees through the heart, ״releasing images to flow to and from the heart as independent realities.״ (3)

Two key international references for Shish׳s early work are artists Lucio Fontana and Cy Twombly. Twombly׳s lyrical scribbling, his emotion-ridden, childlike, childized ״doodling,״ and Fontana׳s slash works—the slash that is the primary, primal, primordial, chaotic locus, before the discipline of oil or acrylic painting has been imposed on it. These are the visual places, the inflamed sites, from which Shish’s creative power operated, striving to entrench itself in the depths of the white paper cover, to carve its own path in Israeli art. Her work was characterized by very simple compositions and the use of a range of cheap, inferior materials. More than it corresponds with the Israeli tradition of the Want of Matter, however, Shish’s work conducts a dialogue with the Italian Arte Povera (one must bear in mind that Shish also lived in Italy for a time).

In view of Shish׳s shell-like, tiny, even miniature, works, the monumental mural she presented at the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion in 2007, The Maiden and the Crow, stood out. The mighty painting wanted to swallow the viewer into its dark space, so to speak, to hypnotize the viewer with black magic. Another equally immersive wall piece that echoed this work was presented at Alon Segev Gallery in the exhibition ״Nerves Sing״ (2008) which I curated. The oversized, alien creatures (see the exhibition ״I Was Kidnapped by Indians״ at The Art Gallery, University of Haifa, curator: Ruth Direktor, 2006) are frequent visitors in Shish׳s creative world. The images she outlines live in the world: the crown, the eagle, the boat, the house, the crow and the maiden. She fulfills Hillman׳s wish for us, the viewers, ״that images always be experienced as sensuous independent bodies.״ (4) Shish׳s images are indeed independent bodies, that lead a life of their own, maintaining a few, fluttering points of contact with our world and with Shish׳s world. Her ability to capture them nonetheless is her greatness.