The Jerusalem Biennale Art-Pub-Crawl

A tremendous burden of responsibility rests on the shoulders of each sperm and egg bank. This growing and very lucrative industry has the stuff of life in its care, and along with the miracles of modern fertility medicine, it also has increased potential for tragic errors. As this phenomenon grows, the moral and ethical risks will increase exponentially.Biography

Andi LaVine Arnovitz was born and raised in the United States. She earned her BFA from Washington University in St. Louis and immigrated to Israel in 1999. Her work has been shown in Europe, Israel, Canada, China the United States, and Eastern Europe; as well as part of many collections including the Library of Congress, The Israel National Library, The Smithsonian Museum and other museums in the United States and Israel, foreign ministries, foundations, and private collections.

In her current work, Linda explores the architecture of subconscious memory. The paintings call upon us to enter her search through a dream-like space. Buildings with arches and domes, and bridges act as a gateway in a journey of yearning, of a longing for home.

Linda Lieff Altabef’s career has been rich and varied. She has degrees from Pratt Institute and Hartford Art School and studied with Roman Vishniac, Daniel Maloney and Phoebe Helman. Early on, Linda designed textiles for companies such as Anne Klein under the direction of Donna Karan, and Calvin Klein. In 2009 Linda made Aliyah with her family.

The “Reflections” series is inspired by images of woman doing household chores in the early 20th century. The enlarged mirror images in black-and-white use the figures and the play of negative and positive space to raise questions about traditional women's roles. Crafted by hand without the assistance of tools, all of the works reveal "mistakes" caused by flipping the images manually. These stand in stark contrast to the smiling faces of the women. In some of the images it is a burst of color that breaks the controlled and contained boundaries of the domestic enterprise.

Haya Fierstein-Zohar, based in Jerusalem, graduated with honors from the Fine Arts Department of the Bezalel Academy of Art. She has exhibited widely, and curated group exhibits in a variety of venues. In her work Haya strives to connect disparate worlds, seen and unseen, by providing visual information in an expressive, yet minimalistic manner. She creates visual oxymorons by playing with the gaps between flatness and depth, between clean and imperfect images and those that are full and colorful.

The video piece entitled "Shaming" resulted from traumatic personal experience: the artist’s teenage daughter was harassed and shamed on social media. This unfortunate event triggered the artist and her daughter to embark upon a ritual journey of healing and purification. The video documents this journey. Inspired by African magic traditions, the personal ceremony took place at the Dead Sea. It included a laying-on of hands – by covering their bodies with mud handprints. While this could be experienced as dirtying or staining, impure and offensive, it undergoes a transformation in the knowledge that the symbol of the human hand is also a motif of protection.

Yifat Naim is a multidisciplinary creative artist, graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, B.A., with an MA in Gender Studies from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Na'im is a social entrepreneur and activist who promotes a far-reaching conversation around gender issues through creating and collaborating with the community. As mother of 4 girls, Naim lives out her belief that creation and connection can nurture a force powerful enough to transform reality for the better.