Yael Efrati In Tandem, Mrs. Jacobovitz

Yael Efrati’s sculptural works are made up of a blend of natural and industrial materials. The works are based on the observation of everyday moments, spatial situations, and architectural areas on the edges of the urban sphere through a photographer’s eye.
Efrati’s “In Tandem” drew inspiration from the area around her home in Jaffa and especially from DIY and often makeshift fences, railings, and gates. The work comprises aluminum rails and fences in different shapes, and two more elements: a eucalyptus branch and red rubber. These integrate into the gate and become an inseparable part of it, in a visual reference to the connections, grafting, and hybridization in plants, where different plant species are combined to create a new variety. “When I looked at the railings and their ornamentality, I thought of vegetation. Since this sculpture is actually a collage of gates and rails, I also thought of botanical hybridization – when you crossbreed or graft plants. The collage amalgamates different types of latticework, which itself sometimes resemble plants, in the same way that grafting a plant produces a new entity through amalgamations.” The hybrid gate, which is composed of inanimate objects and plants, is distinct and present – but leads nowhere.
The second work, “Mrs. Jacobovitz”, consists of a stair railing combined with a eucalyptus branch and the rubber tip of a walking cane. Efrati uses these elements to conjure a specific figure: a typical, almost stereotypical neighbor who goes up and down the stairs every day at the same time. Another element in the work, clay “cat food,” suggests that she is returning home after the daily ritual of feeding street cats.
The significance of the object, then, lies not only in its material presence, but also in its ability to evoke memory, to trigger one’s personal imagination – and to highlight the urban space as an arena of relationships between the private and the public, the esoteric and the monumental, the inanimate and the human.