Maya Zehavi

Maya Zehavi

‘’Space is the broadest context. Engaging with the stars means being engaged with infinity, from our distant past to the end of all days. It means passionately engaging with the birth, life and death of souls and stars, of material, energy and the harmony between them.
Thinking about space means thinking about the smallest, subatomic particles, to the largest elements – stars, clusters, galaxies, quasars; the entire universe. As important, the continuity between small and large, between near and far, which are not partitioned and are weaveen as one.
Engaging with the stars means engaging in mystery and distant infinitely, and in all those bodies and frequencies that we do not see or hear. It also means observing what appears nearest to the eye, like a stone or light.
Looking at the sky means looking at familiar phenomenons like a sunset and strange phenomenons like a black hole, in a world that is too big and complex for words and numbers to quantify.’’
(Dror Burstein; 2018)
Maya Zehavi’s work begins in her encounters with actual echoing moments of reality, disconnecting from them, changing their internal structure and creating new systems of connections.
Through photographs and installations, she seeks to express how occurrences in the world permeate and touch life.
Her image archive contains analog photos and images that she collects from various sources, both personal and public.
Her work uses daily imagery alongside images of stars and outer space, archeological items she produces, stones and other objects; this allows her to make connections between what is personal and what is public, pointing out the range between ‘universal’ and ‘particular’, between the metaphysical dimension and the physical one.
Photography is the starting point. The desire for a physical experience of presence in space, like the desire for touch, is what drives Maya to move away from traditional photography and look for other ways to use the medium. Optics, chemistry and mechanics fascinate her, sometimes manifesting themselves in her work.
Light, disruptions, lack of control and coincidence engage her in both practice and the conceptual level. Maya is inspired by nature as she move between rural and urban environments, and by human behaviors and mental conditions.