NikaFro

Strings of the Universe

“He started explaining that there were infinite numbers of lines that joined us to things.
Let’s say that you can feel them.
The most difficult part about the warrior’s way is to realize that the world is a feeling.
When one is not-doing, one is feeling the world, and one feels the world through its lines.”

Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda

In the distance, I vaguely discerned a chain of mountains to the west. The sun rose above the horizon. I fixed my gaze upon it, and then I saw the ‘Strings of the Universe.’ I noticed a most wondrous phenomenon of pale strings in white, connecting to everything around me… stretched above everything in the environment, or through it.

From The Journey to Ixtlan by Castaneda

About the Body of Work “Strings of the Universe”

For a year and a half, every morning when I went to work in the date plantation in the southern Arava of Israel, the Red Mountains of Jordan stood before me. Their beauty and power overwhelmed me each time, leaving me speechless in their presence.

I wanted to find a way to capture, describe, and express the feeling that passed through me when I saw them. I tried to do this through drawing – with a writing tool in one hand and a blank sheet in the other. But all I was able to draw was the outline of the ridge. Thus, I found myself focusing on the fine line where the mountains meet the sky. Over time, the ridge line became something abstract – a single line on a white sheet, to which another line joined, like an echo of the first. Slowly, a uniform network of lines wove together, becoming a dynamic expression of the entire experience.

The exhibition consists of three series:

The first series – Charcoal drawings on paper: Drawings depicting the landscape of Neot Semadar at twilight and during sunset. I was interested in examining, during the hours of darkness when vision becomes blurred, whether in an altered state of perception, one could capture something that is usually hidden from my eyes.

The second series – “The Seekers Series”: Drawings created based on photographs I took across the country and around the world, in highly touristic natural areas. I “translated” these photographs into the language of strings. In these places, the presence of humans or human intervention in nature is evident – in a way that is both a part of it and foreign to it at the same time. The drawings express this complex relationship.

The third series – “The Assemblage point study No. 1 and No. 2”: A series of abstract drawings, in which the strings appear without any concrete imagery. In these drawings, I surrender to the meditative process of drawing, focusing intensely on the lines I follow. The result is the creation of a topography of sensation – without touching, one can almost feel the three-dimensionality and the shapes that emerge.