June 2017. My series of dioramas or "ethnographic tableaux" featuring the fauna and flora of Israel and Palestine is growing...

Why do I call these dioramas "ethnographic tableaux'?? Because they are based on my personal observation and participation in these contexts, and are a play on the French term 'tableau vivant' which means the live re-enactment of a scene and thus relates to my original academic training as a realist painter, as well as my work as an ethnographer.

I began this project in earnest in 2016, propelled by several determining states of mind: surrounded in Jerusalem (where I live since 2015) by so many tragic instances of varying forms of violence, it became necessary for me to explore another way of doing art that could re-connect me with the innocence and wide-eyed wonder at the world that we all originally have as children. I made myself re-discover the simple pleasures of playing with small things, making new objects out of used or organic matter. In the process, I re-connected with the concept of 'bricolage' that the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss introduced to describe the human inclination to make sense of one's environment by resorting to material resources at hand. I went back to simple illustrations, and together with bricolage, re-created little worlds in the form of dioramas that speak about the reality around us but in a more light-hearted way. I use recycled and organic material as a way to also bring attention to the excessive production and consumption of things that destroy our natural environment.

One series of dioramas focuses specifically on pastoralism, something I have felt close to since I was a child being with the animals in the Basque Country. Since living in Jerusalem and getting to know  Bedouin shepherd families, I re-discovered the deep affection for something profoundly human and intimate with the natural environment. Sheepherding is a way of life that is undergoing great changes, faced with acute political, economic and environmental challenges. All this I seek to evoke in these dioramas.

'Ploughing, near Dura, Palestine (West Bank)'

'Sheep, donkey and shepherd near Hebron and settlements, Palestine (West Bank)'

'Sheep and shepherd near Hebron and settlements, Palestine (West Bank)'

'Bedouin family and sheep near Har Homa settlement, between Jerusalem and Bethlehem'

'Off to school, near Hebron, Palestine (West Bank)'

'Olive picking, near Bathir, Palestine (West Bank)'

'In the spring, with the activist group Ta'ayush, sheep and Bedouin shepherds in the Jordan Valley, Palestine (West Bank), Israeli army and outpost closeby'