(To me - you), 2024, Latex Installation.
Li Chen’s father is a central, meaningful figure in her life. He is a present, caring and attentive father. Her childhood environment was the sign factory he managed. There, he demonstrated and explained with endless patience about the work, the materials, the neon signs, the sheet metal and the plexiglass (in the 1990s he produced the guitar for the. Hardrock Café at Dizengoff Center). ֿThe passion for working with materials is a multigenerational legacy. Her grandfather taught her father welding and how to work with sculptural materials, molds and casts. During her studies in the Department of Ceramics and Glass Design at Bezalel, her father helped her create letters, boxes, and frames, as well as helped with the installation of exhibitions. Over the years, Chen collected sentences he would repeat and notes he would leave for her before he went to work: “Stop buying tights, but don’t save on anything connected to your art.” “I fixed your car.” “I bought you fish and a few things.” “I can’t sleep because of you.” “Enough”. “Come home.” “You got your grandfather’s hands.” “You are my whole world.” “The world sucks, stop taking things personally.” “My whole life he has been beside me, making sure I have everything I need. He asks, shows interest, helps and blurts out caring sentences which are sometimes even annoying but usually funny,” says Chen. His words are so much a part of her it is as if they are tattooed on her skin. The flexible character, texture, and colour of the latex material in her works are reminiscent of human skin and represent the essence of their close relationship. The words are imprinted on the material as a reminder that references the sign factory. Positioning the work in the form of a blanket and a floor lamp are reminiscent of a warm,well-lit home. Her father named her “Li-at” after his own mother Leah. At the age of 20, she shortened her name to “Li”, as a symbolic act of embarking on her own independent path.
"Our Father" Group Exhibition
Curators: the late Ruty Chinsky-Amitay and Rotem Ritov
The exhibition Our Father is a tribute to Ruty Chinsky-Amitay, who was taken from this world tragically in January 2024, when she was at the pinnacle of her research at the Cité art residency in Paris. Ruty worked on this tender and delicate exhibition, which deals with relationships between fathers and daughters, throughout the last year of her life. After her death, Ruty’s life partner Ofer entrusted me with the list of artists and artworks Ruty had selected some time before, as well as her notes, which included references to articles and psychoanalytical sources which discuss the relationships between daughters and fathers and the appearance of these familial relationships in mythology. Ruty’s curatorial craft was cut short horrifically. In the notes provided to me, Ruty jotted down a single line containing several guiding questions that hint at her curatorial intentions: “To what extent did the relationships between daughters and fathers influence and dictate their art? In what way? What was overt and what was covert? What was the definitive moment? Sometimes these are things that become clear at a later stage.” What were Ruty’s thoughts and where did she plan to point the thematic spotlight? I will never know for sure. My conversations with the artists revealed a variety of father-daughter relationships. What they all had in common were similar characteristics of paternal presence/absence in their lives, as well as their context within worldwide societal and cultural conceptions.
Thus, I embarked on a journey of study led by the question: What is fatherhood?
