ZIVIA PONEY

Zivia Poney: Fear of Claustrophobia

Dr. Zvika Israel

Zivia Poney is a very industrious intriguing multi-disciplinary artist, who weaves covert messages into her artistic creations.

She produces poetic narrative painting interlaced with humor, criticism and perspective. Her artistic works are multidimensional, beyond three dimensions, containing a hidden reality, in which she provides significance for her own inner dimension.

In her sculpture, this inner dimension is expressed in a sort of protected womb, perhaps enclosing a secret that might be exposed later on by a perceptive observer. An example of this can be found in her important work “Jonah the prophet and I”. According to the artist: “I thought a lot about the lack of desire to accept the mission … the story of Jonah the prophet fascinates me especially from the aspect of the phenomenon of being closed in, the claustrophobia.”

Being closed in can, in my view, be interpreted as the complete opposite of freedom, both freedom of expression and the individual’s feeling. This important component is derived in my estimation from the fact that Zivia is a female artist during the post-feminist era, with a deep vision and understanding and unique humorous perception; creating in a period when the language of expression has a major conceptual weight in modern art.

The narrative expressed in Zivia’s work is realistic, inspired by reality, often even surrealist and she uses abstract components of texture and color that transform her works from situational illustration to intriguing works of art.

Zivia explains that she works in environmental materials, and her subjects are inspired by observation of huge piles of garbage. She has consolidated her poetic narrative concepts by drawing on her childhood reality, her past tradition, presenting her work in complementary series, as a basis for concrete consideration of the here and now.