Talia Kotz-Shamir: Thread and Absence

In her works participating in the exhibition, Talia Kutz Shamir—an artist and art therapist—breathes life into the act of embroidery as a means of repairing ruin and catastrophe. In October 2023, Kutz Shamir lost her brother, his wife, and their three children, residents of Kibbutz Kfar Aza. For her, embroidery is not merely an artistic medium, but rather “reaching inward” toward the depths of the abyss, in an attempt to sense its shape and materiality.

The works move along a painful timeline between October 1973 and October 2023, continuing to the present day. The surfaces on which she embroiders are charged, existing materials: a military shirt, a tablecloth, and pillowcases that remained in the family home, which was destroyed. On these fabrics, bearing the memory of body and home, Kutz Shamir embroiders images ranging from the figurative to the symbolic. When she embroiders an image of her niece Rotem on the reverse side of a military shirt—looking at us from within a field of anemones—it becomes a desperate attempt to revive a connection between generations that was violently severed.

At the heart of the exhibition lies the tension between the world that was and the world that has become. Mud, tar, and the cracked black impact craters in the fabrics invade the idealized whiteness and greenery; yet even within the encroaching darkness, Kutz Shamir proposes a thread of compassion: the stork that accompanies soaring spirits in flight holds a white thread in its beak. This thread does not merely sew the fabric; it seeks to mend the ruptures in the psyche and memory before they are lost forever.