Edna Ohana

Cocooning

installation

Edna Ohana ventured into the woods near home to experience the sensation of cocoon within a womb of thread.

Following up on my work with threads, I set out on a new venture, motivated by the feelings aroused in me in the previous project. With the idea of aspiring to gather up the sensations from the city and withdrawing inwards with them, I set off into the wood near my home, to discover a spot in among four trees.  Between the trees, I set about marking out my new territory, and enveloping it in thread.  Having enclosed the first space, I began to constrict my area by means of the already present threads, reducing myself to a state wherein I was no longer able to budge.  I felt as though I were becoming a cocoon.  The sensation within was one of isolation, giving me a sense of enclosure and divorce from the familiar internal reality, a process that led me to places of which I had been less aware previously, such as thoughts of internal freedom, and a recognition of the sensation of liberty. For the first time, I experienced the composition engendered by the threads enveloping me.  I was protected, within a painted womb I had created for myself. The painting touches me, I touch it, I am the smudge of paint within a tangled mass of lines.  Within a broad motion, I retreat into small movements, now creating small lines, having become the core.  This sensation evoked the experience of re-birth from within the picture. Emerging from the cocoon, I was able to see the drawing created outside, my intervention in Nature. It reminded me of observing animals as they construct their nests so as to survive, to maintain the continuity of Nature. I felt briefly like an animal that has marked out its territory.  It is this experience whose sensations I am still working through into a more massive creation within the gallery space.

Edna Ohana

The rebirth she experienced there is translated into an installation, where the threads of her thoughts envelop and protect her, restricting her movements while simultaneously evoking reflections of internal freedom, and recognition of the sensation of liberty. From her feelings of isolation, enclosure and divorce from familiar reality, she breaks out of the cocoon, to gain an external view of the composition her cocooning has created. It is her intervention in the workings of Nature, emulating a creature of the wild constructing its nest to ensure the continuity of her Kind.

Hedva Shemesh
The Gallery Curator