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About Me.

I live in a constant search.

In 2003 after graduating my art studies in the university, I started working with a technique that incorporates body embedding on canvas. The idea of imprinting myself, painting with my body, was created out of a desire to rebel against the classic painting techniques. A desire to eliminate the work of my skilled hand, holding the paintbrush, to delete years of rigid, uncompromising Russian technical learning. At that time, my mind was occupied by my children's happiness and the gap between my childhood in the USSR and the childhood of my own children, growing up in Israel.

In 2014 after my third child was born, my art focused on the woman's body, from the cruel point of view of her own eyes, looking through lenses of criticism and self-hatred. As part of my research on obesity, I did a series of body shots, bursting out of them into a series of works called "Fat Bella".

 

Since 2016 I have been writing a short story blog, telling humorous, autobiographical stories - memories of the Soviet Union or stories of my life in Israel as an immigrant, as a mother, whose children pronounce her name with a heavy Israeli accent. Each story is accompanied by an illustration. The illustrations are done on pages, taken from an old children’s book, written by Gianni Rodari, which I received as a gift for my eighth birthday. At that stage of my life, I still believed in communism, and "knew where I belonged"

Rodari was an Italian communist, author of children’s books, whose works glorified communism, and were part of the brainwashing that every child in Soviet Russia underwent. On the torn pages from Rodari’s book, I paint my new life and my old memories. There, on the torn, delicate and fragile page, is the connection between past and present, a mixture of words and color.

 

In 2018 "place" became the main theme of my art. As an immigrant, for years I have been searching for the place (some physical space), home or land to which I belong. I hoped that after 22 years in Israel, I would feel less detached, more attached, but reality has proven otherwise. I am still an immigrant, seeking her identity, and the place I belong to exists only in my paintings.

Since 2018 I've been working on a series of paintings called 'Place'. I build my new art on the foundations of my past, leaving behind the rigid Russian education, abandoning the years of painting studies in Soviet Moscow. I mix techniques and mediums, tearing and cutting up paper illustrations of classic paintings, to re-paste the pieces.

Since the beginning of 2020

 I have been creating a series of works that deal with the transformation of art creations, from the physical, to the digital world. Over the past year and a half, during which the Corona Virus has locked us all inside our homes, my art has been viewed mostly on the digital media. I paint on canvas, choose exact shades for every stroke of my brush, create images made up of complex details, but in the end my drawings are viewed on the small screen of a mobile phone. The final “look” of my work is dependent on the quality of the screen of the mobile phone on which it is being viewed. There, in that little appliance, the quality of my art is debated and critiqued, without anyone actually having seen the original.

 

This creates a situation where the actual painting, on canvas, is only part of the work and is not the final stage. The primary experience of the audience takes place in the digital world, and from this, arose the idea of burning the original, and converting the physical drawing to an NFT file.In the current series, each piece is made up of three parts - a video of the burning of the original painting, an NFT file, and a device that is connected to the network.

C.V

 

Bella Hvatskin - Artist

Name: Bella Hvatskin

D.O.B: 26/02/1978

Address: Israel, Kibbutz Lehavot Habashan, 12125

P.O. Box 268

Mobile: 050 -2606036

Site: bellahvatskin.com

Email: bellahvatskin@gmail.com

 

Artist, Owner and teacher of a drawing studio “Gut-Drawing” in Lehavot Habashan.

Award - winning Set and costume designer

Living and creating art at kibbutz Lehavot Habashan, in the Upper Galilee.

Married, with 3 children.

 

Exhibitions:

2023: Bar-David museum. "Value dous not change". Curator Avi Ifergan.

2021: Art Galil 5 Kfar Gilady Group Exhibition. Curator Daliya Zalzberg.

2020: Reshon Lazion city Gallery."The Russian Compound". Reshion Lazion Solo Exhibition. Curator Efi Gen.

2020: Pop Up museum TLV. Curator Yaara Zachs.

2019: Habarbur Gallery "The place". Jerusalem. Group Exhibition. Curator Sara Ounil.

2019: Mahanaim Gallery."Inside out". Kibuts Mahanaim Solo exhibition. Curator Nava Harel Shoshani.

2018: Art Galil 3 Kfar Gilady Solo exhibition. Curator Daliya Zalzberg.

2017: Curator of Art Galil 2 Kfar Gilady.

2016: Art Galil 1 Kfar Gilady Solo exhibition. Curator Hanny Hotam.

2014: Curator of Tel Hai Gallery: “Galilee Winds”.Tel Hai. 

2013: Lake Ra’anana Gallery. “Winter Salon” Raanana. Group Exhibition. Curator Bella Zaichik.

2012: The Advocate Towers Gallery, Tel Aviv. Group Exhibition. Curator Bella Zaichik.

2010: The Jaffa Knight Tower Gallery. “Light”. Old City Jaffa Group Exhibition. Curator Sasha Genelin.

2008: Museum Hutzot Jaffa.  Group exhibition. Old City Jaffa. Curator Efi Fabien.

 

Theater and Movie set and costume design:

2021 "Day of Noah" Maranatha production. Director Dolton Thomas 

2000-2021 Set and costume designer for more than forty theater shows

 

Theater awards:
2017 "Golden Porcupine" award for set design for the play "Bull" by Mike Bartlett, director Orly Rabanyan

2016 "Golden Porcupine" award for design for the play "To life"  by Gili Ivri, director Gili Ivri

2002 First award for set design for the play "breaking a butterfly". Haifa Festival children's shows. By Yael Navy.          

          director Gal Gutman.

Education and Training:

1997 – 2000: Haifa University.

                     Course in Art creation

                     Course in Theater stage design  

1995 – 1996: Moscow University

                       Course in psychology

1984 – 1995: High school education (Moscow), Full Diploma

1991 – 1993: "1905" Moscow Art College.

1983 – 1990:   Private painting and drawing lessons with leading teachers

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