Edem

Storytelling is the essence of human existence. Since Homer up to Netflix, this is what keeps human going. Gossip is the salt and pepper of life. Everyone has something to share, in one way or another, and in our days as we all know it is so easy, each and every one creating his own personal myth and claims moments of fame among potential fans. In these difficult times we are living we are so much more eager for sharing stories, feelings, emotions, thoughts, it has become an absolute necessity, as human contact which the most natural things has become almost impossible, a restricted thing.
I try to tell stories too. My stories are about me, my family, things I see and experience in the street, camouflaged through the fantastic world of my imagination. Sometimes they are not even at all about real things, as a way of escape from the dullness of everyday life. Books and literature have been my best friends since childhood and continue to do so. My images are often inspired by them, mostly from the sensation they create in my mind, rather than the narrative itself. Cultures and traditions of the world are also a great inspiration, especially the spoken tradition of folk tales, the rituals, the feasts, the whole spectacle and mysticism of ceremonies and costumes, the body painting and decoration and all the meanings and symbols they bear. The surreal element is important to me. Animals and plants obtain a personality; they become supreme, while humans are minor. Sometimes they create hybrid creatures, coexisting in fairy tale landscapes. All that comes greatly from the subconscious but also from research into worldwide traditions and relating to some of them. History of art, in west culture terms, is inevitably in my influences, and I try to integrate a hint, a comment on it in my work, especially on certain periods that I find intriguing and sort of surreal in their extravagance and flamboyance, such as the baroque. It is interesting to observe that rituals exist in every aspect and moment of humans coexistence. The female figure is dominant, either as in her human condition, either as a hybrid creature deriving from the fauna or flora kingdom, a creature between a monster and a deity. Woman’s nature, multiple as it is, evokes these associations and symbolisms, with numerous examples in the mythology and tradition of most civilizations. Some themes derive from history, and mostly from history about colonization, stories of violence. You will not see violence in my work, as the goal is elevation, a sense of atonement. In these difficult days, my mind wanders in places I have not yet been, in places I dream of going, or simply made in my imagination. I try to translate my mixed emotions into pictures that have an optimistic essence and that would summon back to us all those things and feelings we so much have missed.