Motherhood and Feminine Fortitude

8.2009 – Motherhood and Feminine Fortitude
Museum Windows Gallery, Tel-Aviv
Curators:  Doron Polak and Ayelet Amurai-Biran


There is no doubt that motherhood is the expression of feminine fortitude, but the question to be asked is whether the height of feminine fortitude is motherhood.  Has a woman who has never borne children, but who has borne ideas, creations and projects of great strength arrived at the height of feminine expression, even if she has never physically given birth to a child?
Motherhood begins with pregnancy.  Every pregnancy is the ripening of an idea, which comes into fruition only through its birth.

If I have dreamed of any particular project or creation which has not been put into implementation, I am still in the stages of pregnancy.  The difference is that physical pregnancy is limited by time and if in the end, a child is not born, and then the pregnancy is infertile, while an ideological pregnancy can go on and on and on.

As one whose yearning for motherhood burns within me, I have created and continue to create, I have become pregnant but have never physically given birth, I have created a series of pregnant women.

I have chosen to represent pregnancy in an aesthetic fashion, to express the beauty in the essence and possibility of pregnancy.  I have not touched upon the pain that accompanies pregnancy and its processes.  I wanted to remain in the realm of joy and beauty, within the yearning and ripening towards birth.