Dafna Rehavia

THE INVISIBLE WOUNDs PROJECT

WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT

This is a collaboration between Dafna Rehavia a mixed-media artist and art therapist David Hanauer a poet, autoethnographer and journaler.

This project touches upon the self as a wounded object which retains the memories and scars of past personal, familial and cultural trauma. In our artistic practice, the bodily sensations and semi-consciousness memories are embodied through the art and poetic processes.

 The artists approach their dialogue through art and poetry in layers that represent the way memories of difficult experiences are hidden and yet still present. The layers manifest the embodied emotions and the communicative echo between the artists, the past and one’s self. The layering process manifest in the  stitching and collaging is an artistic mending process that brings into presence those things that are too difficult to present.     

The project is supported by STAUNTON FARM FOUNDATION, RADIANT HALL ORG. ARTISTS IMAGE RESOURCES INC. and BRIGHT ARCHIVES Independent production house.

Next

*A walkthrough the exhibition about 20 min.

*A few videos related to the project process and workshops

*Photos from the exhibition

*Words about the artists

INVISIBLE WOUNDS PROJECT presented in PITTSBURGH PA CULTURAL District

Did the Grass Stop Growing ?

Did the grass stop growing? - is an artwork that is part of a shared project entitle Invisible Wounds which deals with the ways in which past personal, familial and cultural trauma reemerge in the consciousness and events of the everyday. Did the grass stop growing is a screen print, relief print, video and audio work which addresses the theme of forced deportation (which is part of the family history of the artists). The statement "Did the grass stop growing?" is a comment on the ways in which the traumatic and mundane coexist in a psychological disconnect. What can be so deeply traumatic for some can be completely ignored by others. While people are transported to the their murders in cattle carts, did the grass stop growing? 

David Hanauer https://www.poeticethnographers.com/ Dafna Rehavia https://www.dafnarehavia.work

This work will have a preview hosted by Radianthall.org Radiant Hall artists org. in the annual POP UP exhibition with the Downtown Cultural Trust - Gallery Crawl this July 26th! 2024

PHOTOS OF SCULPTURAL PAINTINGS, INSTALLATION AND PRINTS will be upload as we move forward including workshops participants visual and literary art

Sacred VOWS

Participating Artists:

Dafna Rehavia is a mixed media artist and an art-psychotherapist. In her artistic journey she has explored existential and identity struggles from personal and sociocultural perspectives. She examines metaphors of the body-self as a site of injury. Her found-art and installations respond to the ways authoritative discourses trap and control the body-self. Rehavia merges her art practice with psychological research as can be seen in her 2020-2021 exhibition Binds & Bonds: Symbolic Somatic Experience. Rehavia has exhibited in solo and group shows in Tel-Aviv, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, New-York, Boston, Amsterdam, and Wurzburg. In New York she was awarded the Chelsea International Fine Arts award for her work Cutting. In 2019 she had an art residency in Wurzburg, Germany resulting in the works Collective Memory, and Reconciliation. She exhibited in the Fiber Art International with her art addressing Female Genital Mutilation. In 2020 Rehavia exhibited in New York in the Immigrant Artist Biennale in which she presents IV.ID., questioning identity and healing, in “Here Together! Mother Tongue.” Dafna has a BFA from Hamidrasha Le Omanut Israel and a Ph.D in therapeutic arts and psychology from the University of Derby, UK.

David Hanauer is published poet, poetic autoethnographer, avid journaler and writing professor. David has developed a range of arts-based research methodologies to allow the uniqueness of individual experience to be expressed. In particular he developed the methods of poetic (auto) ethnography as a way of allowing himself and others to understand a wide range of human life. He has a particular interest in the voices of people who have been marginalized. Using poetry writing as a research method, David’s poetry and art-research methods have addressed life experiences including war experiences of US veterans, mourning for a parent, childhood during the Blitz, wearing the Hijab, Libyan women’s lives, Holocaust life stories, and a range of additional life experiences (www.poeticethnographers.com). Examples of his work can be found here: (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1077800419898500). David is a Professor of Applied Linguistics at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a Radiant Hall studio member.