I entered the Marie Gallery with a sense of déjà vu. I had previously exhibited there with the current solo artist at the invitation of the guest entertainer. It was not only familiar ground but also a familiar subject. Sarith Leila Haas is best known for her work on Shoah commemoration, as a sole daughter of Holocaust survivors. I share that sad legacy with her, though I am blessed with a sister. So it was with curiosity that I visited With My Full Weight last week for the gallery talk held on Yom HaShoah.

It was almost old home week as the former member of the Marie Gallery (a Jerusalem cooperative gallery founded in 2017 as an independent arts center), who hosted our 4-woman exhibit Wonder Woman in 2022, Naomi Tannhauser-Kedar, was back as a live entertainer singing songs in Arabic-Morocan and “Eyes” by Yair Dalal with song sheets to sing along. This is a relatively new outlet for Tannhauser-Kedar, and she says she also feels connected to aspects of the subject, though her mother was  Swiss and not a Holocaust survivor.

It is especially appropriate for the setting since Leila Haas is the solo artist and is herself an accomplished poet in addition to an accomplished artist as the prolific and varied works on display show in her debut solo exhibit at the Marie Gallery. Only Parvin Schmueli Buchnik, of the Wonder Women, now a member of neighboring Agripas 12 Gallery, was missing, and that was due to illness.

With My Full Weight was curated by Haas and hung by her significant other Rami Dakel, and it was a big job. This was not just about deciding which among the works should be on exhibit, but also due to the war conditions of the hanging. Sirens and other hurdles were part of the pre-exhibit nerves, giving a very realistic taste of the kind of trauma her parents had encountered.

Haas had worked with Dekel on a performance piece, with a special niche devoted to its display that includes his sculptures. Haas, who had previously known the writer of the exhibit’s Hebrew text, curator Rina Genussov, was in the picture digitally throughout the lead-up. The English text came from an AI-generated translation.

Exploring her relationship with her mother, Haas compares it to emotional orphanhood, and in her poem, Like Siamese Twins, wrote:  “Mother/I carry /you/ upon me/ like excess weight/ even when you disappear /the weight/ is heavy/ like Siamese twins/ we are connected.”

Of the large-scale pieces in the main room, I was most drawn to one showing eyeless, disjointed figures mostly in a pink and bordeaux palette with an overall feeling of sadness. Haas combines many elements here, including animals from her personal iconography, as well as other symbols she has been working with for many decades.

Genussov wrote that the erased facial features are an act of survival and sealed red lips represent for her a wound yearning for the missing emotional nourishment of her childhood. More recent work includes pairs of eyes, with intuitive words and recurring sentences like a mantra, filling out the images from her poetry.

Now with her own only daughter, the chain of intergenerational transmission continues, and she delves deeper through more veils in these large pieces. These expressive works are enigmatic with layers and symbols.

Perhaps most fascinating to me was the corridor entryway into the main gallery that was filled with her working ideas as a kind of visual desktop full of different media and the search for the symbols that have become part of her own bank of images. These included mixed media, photo prints, engravings, drawings, watercolors, and collages, which were done in small sizes and also showed her experimentation with her color palette.

You aren’t heavy, you are a part of me.

The exhibit continues at the Marie Gallery, for hours, check their website. It will close on Saturday, 16.05.26. https://www.sarith-leila-haas-art.com/

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)