ILANA EFRATI ON EXHIBIT AT SCD STUDIO IN PERUGIA

Curated by Barbara Pavan e Susanna Cati
25 March – 1 May 2023
Opening Saturday 25 March 2023, 5 p.m.
SCD Studio, via Bramante 22/n, Perugia
Info mob. +39 347 177 6001 | scdtextileandartstudio@gmail.com
www.scdtextileandartstudio.wordpress.com

SCD Studio (via Bramante 22N) in Perugia will be opening Ilana Efrati‘s immersive installation – LIGHT, EARTH, MEMORY – curated by Barbara Pavan and Susanna Cati on Saturday 25 March 2023, at 5 p.m.

The site-specific installation is an eco-sustainable collage composed of a collection of fabrics of various sizes and scraps from the fashion production process. Silk, wool, cotton preserve here the marks left by plants, an imprint of the landscape of which they are an expression, and which the changing light in the course of the day caresses behind them, revealing the heterogeneity of the weavings, the variety of the fibres, the details hidden between the threads, opening up reflection on the diversity between human and natural time. Joined by simple safety pins, they remind us that every form is temporary, nothing is permanent, everything is in slow transformation and what we see in this instant is the ephemeral passage in a process always in fieri.

Ilana Efrati makes us participate in her dense dialogue with that Mediterranean nature based on a botanical and landscape language common to the entire region, to a plurality of cultures overlooking the sea that has been its cradle and communication route, emphasising how the subdivision and separation of the Earth is an artificial and unnatural misunderstanding. In fact, Efrati’s artistic research moves among the multiple relational dynamics of man – with the environment, with other living forms, with his own kind – going so far as to investigate themes such as globalisation, migration, identity. In her works, she reminds us that nature enables our existence and that throughout its history man has found in it not only nourishment but also inspiration for his own creativity and resources for his ingenuity, and that his right to inhabit it is intimately related to that of all other species.

Light, Earth, Memory are here inspiration, tool, material, form, content: the work itself.

Some time ago, Efrati chose to leave the city and move to an old country house. Her studio is nestled between the forest, the vegetable garden and the fruit trees that she cultivates without pesticides to restore the fertility of the land that has been lost through the exploitation of intensive agriculture. Walking in nature has revealed to her infinite nuances in the passage of the seasons, colours that change at every moment, influenced by rain, humidity and sunlight; but also sounds that have been lost to memory – footsteps on the ground, the sound of leaves, birds singing. It is all of this that enters, in a seamless flow, into her works in a language that speaks, through natural pigments, of branches, flowers, roots, barks, representing the specificity of a territory and the precious reality of an individual day, without, however, ever disregarding its universal character.

The artist

Ilana Efrati is a multidisciplinary artist and designer. She graduated in Art and Graphic Design in Tel Aviv. In 1983 she founded the brand Ilana Efrati in the same city, which includes fashion, leather goods, ceramics and photography with an emphasis on quality fabrics and locally inspired design. For a decade in the 1990s she created and curated Designers Avenue, a space dedicated to Israeli fashion and design in a chain of department stores in Israel. In 1995 she created the AA 100% cotton women’s fashion line, everyday clothes inspired by the style of Israeli workshops in the 1950s. In 2005 she landed in Umbria, involved in the recovery, restoration and reconstruction of an old farm estate where she started organic cultivation at the same time as a growing interest in purely artistic experimentation also through the medium of textiles. In 2010 she founded the online magazine Masaot (travels in the wardrobe, masaot.com) dedicated to the cultural, historical and artistic aspects of fashion travelling the world. In 2019 she published the book Orto: Nature, Inspiration, Food written with Or Rosenboim, based on Ilana Efrati’s daily photographs in nature. Recent exhibitions include (2022) Homage to the Earth, Artists House Gallery, Tel Aviv; Paisley from a Prince to Prince, The Museum of Islam, Jerusalem; (2021) After the birds’ paradise, solo exhibition, Herzelyyia Museum of Contemporary art, curated by Aya Lurie and Natalie Tiznenko; (2020) The smell of art, HaHava Gallery, Holon; Object of passage, Ashdod Museum; (2019) The Museum of Italian Jewry, Jerusalem; (2018) Circle, Beit Biniamini Gallery, Tel Aviv, curated by Shlomit Bauman; In between, Periscope Gallery, Tel Aviv; A place for fashion, Israel Museum, Jerusalem. In 2022, she founded Studio Ilana Efrati, a multi-disciplinary art space in Tel Aviv.