Visual Artist

Andi Arnovitz

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL

I believe art is one of the most powerful tools in creating social change. My artistic goal is to seduce the viewer visually and then inspire both an intellectual and an emotional response that challenges beliefs, creates awareness, or prompts engagement with a given issue.

My artistic practice focuses on the flashpoints where gender, religion, and politics meet. Of great concern to me are issues where personal agency is hindered by religion and/or politics. In the past, I have explored issues of domestic violence, reproductive freedom, abuses of power where church and state are entwined, nuclear proliferation, and currently, problems of climate change.

I am interested in these places of friction, the territory where things are not all black and white, and where we, as human beings, have the potential to create change, or to find common ground. In my work I search for vehicles to share the human condition.

I work in a variety of media, with fabrics, printmaking processes, paper and porcelain. Much of my artistic practice is focused on creating statements through the use of multiples: thousands of prayers, thousands of paper scrolls, thousands of rods of clay, thousands of pieces of paper, hundreds of pieces of resin, all painstakingly assembled.

My goal is to lure people in with the visual magnitude of the piece and then cause the viewer to pause, to think, to decide, to investigate. If this occurs, then I am wholly satisfied.

What are you making right now?

I am working on an exhibition ( in 2027) about forgotten communal women leaders in the Eastern European villages (the shtetl) of the 20th century. The healers, the midwives, the charity collectors, the candlemakers, the professional mourners... I am making textile collars, creating an artist book and large scale collage/paintings all about/as a tribute to these amazing forgotten women.

What medium do you work in and what drew you to it?

I call myself "the paper manipulator." I do not only make prints, but I continually roll, glue, and use paper. Whether it is for printmaking, collage, an artist book, or a sculpture, there is generally paper being used in some way.

If you could spend an hour with anyone you admire, living or dead, who would it be and what would you ask them?

I would like to take just one hour of William Kentridge's time. I would ask him how and when he decides to make a drawing, and when he decides to make that drawing a sculpture... or even an Opera! How he manages his staff and how he creates the fine line between what he does and what they do. I want to know what books are on his bedside table. What his next project is. How his Jewishness factors into his work.

What do you need in your workspace to spark creativity?

Light. Good music. Fresh air. Quiet. Coffee. Time. Lots and lots of time. A goodnight's sleep doesn't hurt either. (No air raid sirens!)

What would you like people to understand about your work?

My work explores places that are difficult to navigate, and hopefully, with my art, they create a bridge for understanding, for dialogue and for exposure to others. I value aesthetics, and it is important to me that my work is done with attention to fine details and craftsmanship. It is also about handwork and texture and layers, which is antithetical to so much of what we are visually exposed to and confronted with these days.

Has your identity, culture, heritage, or community influenced your creative practice?

My work is all about who I am and where I live, especially being a woman andand a mother. I deeply believe the work is more powerful and authentic when it comes from a known place. That doesn't preclude empathy for another'sexperience... I do work about other cultures' flashpoints, but I find my strongest work is that which I own, experience and feel deeply. Being Israeli and Jewish has everything to do with what I create. My work is all about my lived experience.

What does success look like to you as a creative?

Being curated into museum exhibitions. Having work purchased by museums and private collectors. Having curators contact me about upcoming exhibitions they want me to participate in. Having major university and institutional libraries buy my artist books.