Following the 1948 War, my family received keys to an abandoned house in Jaffa from the Jewish Agency. It was an impressive, grand house with a large surrounding yard, as well as an inner courtyard that led to all the rooms. On one of their first days in the house, when my grandfather was digging a hole to plant a tree, he discovered a large barrel hidden just under the earth. Of all the contents of the barrel, only two porcelain teacups remain. They were left in my grandmother’s possession and I inherited them last year, following her passing.

The works in the exhibit were created from the encounter with three-dimensional tattoos, which conceptualize exposed and wounded areas of the body. They respond to the same guiding logic of those tattoos, which affirms that in order to uncover what lies beneath, the above layer should be concealed.

This installation is a cross-section of the enclosed balcony wall in my grandmother’s house: the window shutters on the outside and the wall on the inside. From the balcony wall which acts as an echo chamber, my grandmother’s voice can be heard, inviting the viewer to put his ear to the wall and listen. She is complaining about her housekeeper, Irene, who lives in the enclosed balcony. That year, Irene stayed in Israel without a work permit, and issuing her an authorization depended on her devoted work to my grandmother. The illegality of Irene’s employment, which needed to be physically concealed with the strange structural cover-up, made the balcony an ideal hiding spot for my grandmother.