Lena Rabenko: I See You Seeing Me

Lina Ravienko (born 1976, Minsk) creates worlds of myth, dream, and fantasy that blend childlike and imaginary elements with folkloric motifs and others drawn from the worlds of animals and plants. Born in Belarus and having immigrated to Israel in 1991, her works—which address, among other things, migration, belonging, and identity—seek to blur boundaries and combine different languages within a single space.

For the upper-window platform at the Petah Tikva Museum of Art, Ravienko imagined the window display site as a living being—not merely a place where people contemplate the artworks on view, but a place that looks back at them as well. Ravienko’s animals and gentle monsters appear in the windows as silent observers, watching passersby approaching the museum building. A gentle reversal in perspective thus emerges: instead of visitors entering to view the artwork, it seems that the artwork discovers them first and observes them. Who is observing whom? The windows, as a threshold between inside and outside, bring imagination to life in everyday surroundings and introduce curiosity and a spirit of play into the public space.

Even when the museum is closed, the building remains present as part of the urban landscape, attracting attention and inviting interaction. The artwork transcends the boundaries of the museum space, flows into the street, and enters into dialogue with passersby.