Yael Segall - "Mirroring Layers"

"Yael Segall is a multidisciplinary artist, who deals with the construction of images, which are gathered by the investigation of different textures of memory. The power of her images is obtained by the action of constructing dramatical, theatrical, sometimes surreal collages, which simultaneously affect the mind and the intellect, as well as, mainly, the emotional drawers of the viewer.

The work process of Yael Segall begins with the investigation of an inner theme, which is sometimes concealed and deep, and the need to produce a space for it, to create a new view of life and offer it to the viewer as a form of a code, or an alternative to reality. In the process of her work, Yael gathers real backdrops and objects, which she recycles in her own visual language, while photographing them, screening them on the wall and integrating them with drawing, painting and objects, which add a multitude of colors and depth to the layers of the piece. Yael's work has a visual, almost magical power, which points to the gap between impressions and emotions.

Michal Heiman writes about the curator Ariella Azoulay's book "Once Upon a Time: Photography Following Walter Benjamin" (2006): “Since its invention in the first half of the 19th century, photography is the perfect site for the possibility to discuss loss, gaze, representation, the death of representation, disinheritance, occupation and more."  According to her, thinkers like Baudrillard or Roland Barthes warn us that photography is at risk. They are able to point out what a good photograph should look like, when it is radical, exotic, and what conditions will allow its ability to construct meaning.

This point is especially interesting for the analysis Yael Segall's work process and her works. In her works, no expression, no portrait, and certainly no typical movement of body language captured in her camera is coincidental. These works are Sisyphean dialogues with herself, with members of her family and with narratives of memory that have accompanied her world of images since childhood.

The title of one of Segall's recent series"Mirroring Layers” offers a dual meaning. On the one hand it refers to a mirror, as an object that reflects the virtual reality, which she uses to construct the sets of her work. But on the other hand, she herself, as a woman and as an artist, unfolds secrets through these layers of memory and time.

Theorist David Gurevich writes that "In the age of visual and digital communication, the discussion in memory becomes a discipline in itself, which affects wide-scale domains such as cinema, society and culture." No doubt, this reading might be correctly applied to the work of Yael Segall. Her works represent her own conflict with personal stories of the past, with their relationship to the present, and perhaps, mainly, with images of reality that will remain for future time."

Doron Polak / the exhibition curator