Coiled Lace

Michal Zakai’s artist book, Coiled Lace, explores themes of the parent–child relationship within the space of home, as experienced during her childhood on a kibbutz in the 1950s and 60s.

The book moves between a nostalgic dimension and a direct engagement with the difficulties inherent in parent–child dynamics, as well as the delicate boundary between the dyadic bond and the development of selfhood.

Zakai’s work is rooted in a rich, multilayered painterly language, combining traditional and experimental techniques. Many of her works are constructed as collages, with the working process itself becoming an act of dismantling and reassembling, in which images emerge through shifts between form, color, mark, and line. Her material exploration moves between the tradition of painting and other fields, including embroidery, where the boundaries between medium and content become blurred.

The book is structured in three chapters: Embroidered Margins, Innocent Curl, and Other Water. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of her practice through works in painting and embroidery. Three poems by writer and poet Orian Zakai, the artist’s daughter, appear between the chapters.
The book also includes an interview with its editor, Merav Shinn Ben-Alon, shedding light on the sources of Zakai’s work..