Yaakov
Yaakov follows the traces of the Berlin-born, Israeli artist Yochanan Ben-Yaakov (1913–2003).
Ben-Yaakov, who fled to Israel in 1933 and settled in Kibbutz Hazorea is best known for his sculptures, murals and other public art. Laufer, a native of the same kibbutz, undertakes an intimate process of revisiting this artist who was notable in shaping her childhood idea of what an artist does and is. Through the adaptation of Ben-Yaakov's professional and personal oeuvre, Laufer identifies connections and opposites between herself and Ben-Yaakov and creates a body of work that challenges authorship and the question of what is truly authentic creation.
In one part of the work, Laufer is focusing on Ben-Yaakov's art work and in another part, she is focusing on his personal life. Laufer began the process by cutting out catalogue reproductions of Ben-Yaakov's work, painting over them, pasting them together, then photographing, reprinting, and drawing over them again. The resulting two-dimensional works are an amalgamation of sculpture, collage and painting. By transforming Ben-Yaakov's husky, monumental, arguably masculine pieces into fragile, intricate sculpture, Atalya mirrors typical gender aspects of making and experiencing art.
The second part of this series follows autobiographical notes Ben-Yaakov left behind. His dramatic life-story unfolds through Laufer’s careful rewriting and redrawing of his hasty, yet very sculpted handwriting. This results in a hybrid multi-gendered handwriting that is neither Laufer's nor Ben-Yaakov's. Both artists share Hebrew and German as their main languages, however in opposite ways. As the text itself is very associative and at times confusing, Laufer demonstrates their mutual attempt to recollect memory by overlapping and repeating excerpts.
