TAL AMITAI-LAVI

In her works, Tal Amitai-Lavi addresses the concepts of home, memory, and family in a way that seeks to shed the innocence and dispel the illusion of security and stability inherent in these notions. In the floor piece Labyrinth, she encrypted a quote from Paul Auster's novel The Invention of Solitude (1982), reflecting on the definition of "house," bringing the jolting moment to the fore in which the house can no longer offer a stable, enveloping space: "At what moment does a house stop being a house? When the roof is taken off? When the windows are removed? When the walls are knocked down? At what moment does it become a pile of rubble? [...] It's pleasant sleeping out under the stars. Never mind the rain. It can't last very long." The current work is a new version of a 2000 work, but the questions it raises remain unanswered. The warm, safe house turns out to be a mere shell, an illusory, fragile structure which easily shatters with a gust of evil winds, revealing rift and loss of innocence underneath.