Alice Zilberberg

Meditations

Introduction

Selected works 2018

Oasis

Introduction

Desert Moon

Introduction

Home

Introduction

This body of work is a reflection of my personal background, and was influenced by a trip I took in the summer of 2013. The landscapes are composited from the two countries that comprise my inherited, and experienced, identity: Israel and Canada. I had been waiting for the opportunity to fly back to Israel, to where I grew up, for twelve and a half years.

As a child, relocation was frequent. I moved to Israel from Estonia when I was 2 years old, living initially in a small Kibbutz and, later, in a Moshav with my older brother and my mother. I was generally a happy kid, I had lots of friends, I was studious, and my love for art was nurtured. This backdrop shifted, however, when we moved to Canada when I was 11. As a kid, I remember thinking that moving to North America would be a terrific experience, that I would change for the better and make something of myself in that “promised land”. The transition was trying for an adolescent.

Coming to Toronto, I had to adjust to the language, the city, and the people. Making friends was daunting for a foreign kid in elementary school, not finding my classmates, or the weather, as friendly as before. For a long time, I was extremely unhappy, and it took me about four years to really digest that I’d be staying in Canada for a while. It wasn’t until we moved again, from mid-town to the suburbs at age 14 that I started feeling better about my situation. Things began to settle incrementally, and eventually the craving to go back wore off.

Visiting Israel at 24 was a very emotional, personal experience. When I landed, just the smell of the air felt overwhelmingly familiar, and hearing the language felt like home. I spent a month traveling the country, including the two small places where I was raised, capped by a few week staying in Tel Aviv. Social interactions made me realize this place I called home was not as familiar as I romanticized. I speak Hebrew fluently, yet people knew instantly that I didn’t live in Israel anymore. My mannerisms were more Canadian than Israeli, and I was slow to grasp social cues. In Israel I was Canadian, and in Canada I was Israeli. Journeying back to Toronto, I realized both, and neither, are home to me.

This project is the processing of my story. The landscapes fuse Canada and Israel; the bottom half, the terrain, was photographed in the deserts of Israel, and the skies were taken in Canada. They are digitally manipulated to appear otherworldly, like a different planet, representing a place I am estranged from. In them I see a familiarity, a place that is so beautiful, that has recognizable features, but somewhere I feel alien.

Goddess Almighty

Introduction

These works are an interpretation and depiction of the character of Mother Nature. Given various names in different cultures, the nature goddess is always worshipped for her association with fertility, fecundity, and agricultural bounty. The most well-known of these is the Greek goddess Gaia, whose name is used for some of the works. In the Greek Olympian creation myth, Gaia is the first goddess to be created from Chaos (nothing) and is the personification of the earth. She gave birth to the sky, mountains and seas, from which all the other gods came.

The character of Mother Nature is thought to be the first being to be worshipped by people—the very first god. When humans were hunter-gatherers, the goddess was equivalent to the Abrahamic god we know today: a being that was mysterious, unpredictable and endlessly powerful. Nature was something that we did not control and was therefore unexplainable and dangerous. After the agricultural revolution, followed by the industrial revolution, this fear of nature was diminished. We have not only conquered nature through technology, but are now destroying it as well with pollution and global warming. The world’s predominant religion (Christianity) always depicts god as a man, never a woman, and devalues women in many ways.

These images take the goddess back to her origins and portray her as powerful, mysterious and ethereal. To depict her character, the goddess is metaphorically and literally blending with nature: branches as arms are an example of this. To represent her strength, a dancer was chosen to model, as dancers are physically strong. Exaggerating this, the muscles were accentuated through photo-manipulation.

The goddess is sometimes depicted with horns or antlers in the images to reference the horned god, a primary deity found in neopagan religions, in which he is associated with nature, sexuality, hunting and life cycle. Christianity co-opted with this character and conceptualized him as evil (the devil), especially due to the association with sexuality. The horned goddess in these works embraces sexuality and sexual expression.

The portraits of the goddess with a halo reference Christian religious iconography, mocking depictions of Jesus Christ and The Virgin Mary. Furthermore, the oval shape, lighting and the painterly aesthetic of the images were influenced from Baroque painters like Frans Snyder, Peter Paul Rubens, and Jan Weenix.

The images personify a nature goddess taken back to her origins, questioning our values and treatment of the natural environment and the state of the earth. They portray the goddess as a woman that is powerful, capable and defeating—she is goddess almighty.

Vanishing of Gaia

Introduction

The Death of Happily Ever After

Introduction

This body of work is a reflection of my personal background, and was influenced by a trip I took in the summer of 2013. The landscapes are composited from the two countries that comprise my inherited, and experienced, identity: Israel and Canada. I had been waiting for the opportunity to fly back to Israel, to where I grew up, for twelve and a half years.

As a child, relocation was frequent. I moved to Israel from Estonia when I was 2 years old, living initially in a small Kibbutz and, later, in a Moshav with my older brother and my mother. I was generally a happy kid, I had lots of friends, I was studious, and my love for art was nurtured. This backdrop shifted, however, when we moved to Canada when I was 11. As a kid, I remember thinking that moving to North America would be a terrific experience, that I would change for the better and make something of myself in that “promised land”. The transition was trying for an adolescent.

Coming to Toronto, I had to adjust to the language, the city, and the people. Making friends was daunting for a foreign kid in elementary school, not finding my classmates, or the weather, as friendly as before. For a long time, I was extremely unhappy, and it took me about four years to really digest that I’d be staying in Canada for a while. It wasn’t until we moved again, from mid-town to the suburbs at age 14 that I started feeling better about my situation. Things began to settle incrementally, and eventually the craving to go back wore off.

Visiting Israel at 24 was a very emotional, personal experience. When I landed, just the smell of the air felt overwhelmingly familiar, and hearing the language felt like home. I spent a month traveling the country, including the two small places where I was raised, capped by a few week staying in Tel Aviv. Social interactions made me realize this place I called home was not as familiar as I romanticized. I speak Hebrew fluently, yet people knew instantly that I didn’t live in Israel anymore. My mannerisms were more Canadian than Israeli, and I was slow to grasp social cues. In Israel I was Canadian, and in Canada I was Israeli. Journeying back to Toronto, I realized both, and neither, are home to me.

This project is the processing of my story. The landscapes fuse Canada and Israel; the bottom half, the terrain, was photographed in the deserts of Israel, and the skies were taken in Canada. They are digitally manipulated to appear otherworldly, like a different planet, representing a place I am estranged from. In them I see a familiarity, a place that is so beautiful, that has recognizable features, but somewhere I feel alien.

Dreaming Girls

Introduction

Selected works 2008-2011

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