Fear of the Void

Yaara Shehori: Your new artist’s book Fear of the Void combines your own work and that of your grandmother, the ceramicist Aggie Yoeli. If you had to say one thing about your grandmother, what would it be?

Dana Yoeli: That is impossible. The first thing you need to know about Aggie is that she was a person of contradictions. And, therefore, I have at least two things to say about her: difficult and wonderful. My grandmother was supposed to be a pianist, but after the war [World War II] it was clear that this was not going to happen. I never heard her play. After the war, she studied for a master’s degree in art at the Beaux-Arts in Prague. When she arrived in Israel, she found herself working at the offices of the Maps and Photographic Service, where she met my grandfather, who was a cartographer.

Let’s remain for a moment in the realms of childhood. What kind of grandmother was she to you?

She was not warm, but she was funny and smart. Aggie spoke with a heavy Hungarian accent and had her own specific expressions, such as: “sensational.” Their house was beautiful and contemporary, perhaps because they spent years in Switzerland and Sweden. When we were little, we, the grandchildren, would sleep over at their house on an uncomfortable sleeper sofa, which we would then have to make back into a sofa again in the morning. It was a house where we had to be quiet between two o’clock and four o’clock in the afternoon, but my grandfather also had a membership to the video rental store Ha’ozen hashlishi (The Third Ear), so we could watch movies when they were resting. We watched all the movies on mute.

Did she steer you to art? Was it clear that you would follow in her footsteps?

Absolutely not. I went to museums with her, but she was not my studio apprentice, even when I asked. She taught me how to work with clay, but she also would say, “She [meaning I] will never be an artist. She will never be a sculptor.” In moments when I miss her, I think she knew that I would be an artist and she wanted to let me do my own thing. But yes, she remained an enigma to me. After she died, I was given her studio, the wheel and the kiln, which I immediately sold because I said I would never make ceramics. Three months later, I bought my own kiln.

And is the artist’s book a joint project?

It is my project. The initial motivation was to publish a large catalog of her works, to do her a historical justice. All across the world there are movements to make amends to women artists of the past who were not given their rightful place during their lifetimes. After October 7, when so many people lost so much, it seems strange to me to focus on preserving and commemorating her. As it is, I already have an ambivalent relationship with archives. Yet the question remains what to do with the work of memories. I kept glaze samples and fragments from Aggie’s studio which, had they been my own work, I would have thrown them away. Keeping these fragments is almost like self-flagellation. I feel like we don’t have time for nostalgia, that it’s an escape from the present moment to a place and time that never actually existed.

It features photographs of a clay sculpture of yours that is gradually decaying. Does this sculpture exist beyond the photographs?

The sculpture is an unfired clay sculpture inside of which I inserted a pump and made it into a fountain. Clay has inexhaustible potential; until it is fired it can always be recycled, return to being part of the cosmos. So, in fact, this sculpture exists only in photographs. There was something very liberating about creating a sculpture that you know will be destroyed. There are many degrees of freedom in that. Not to repair, not to renew, there is also a comfort in this destruction. If I had tried to fire it, it would have undoubtedly exploded in the kiln because of how it was constructed.

And it is also the story of my grandmother’s vases that appear in the photographs in the book. These are vases that I never saw. I found the photographs of them after she had died, during the shiva. Based on the background and the tiled roof visible in photos, we think that they were made abroad, and that my grandfather photographed them. These are vases that are technically very hard to make on a wheel, while there is something almost child-like about the decorations. It has to do with my grandmother, who knew all the rules of the old world and played between worlds. In my opinion, she had a nihilism built into her approach to things.

But it’s different with you.

This is probably the tension of the work. I also rely on tradition, but in all my porcelain works, I do things that you aren’t supposed to. Sculptors and potters shudder in front of my work, but the lack of knowledge frees me. I am looking for a connection to the decorations of that world that was destroyed and we were never really a part of, a Rococo, silly, decorative world that also holds a poetic feeling for me. It’s kitschy but also poignant. In the end, it is a kind of world that is also this and also that, or maybe it’s neither this nor that. And, in general, my grandparents, who were of that generation, were people who belonged neither here nor there, and much more than we thought. That too has stayed with us. Look, when my grandmother came to Israel, she said that the ugliness here would kill her. To me, ugliness is a bit funny.

What do you mean?

Beauty is also a sign of fascism. I understand this more since the last two years. The world is different for me now. Think of a very refined and polished space, how people behave in it, what the relationship is between a person and the street, the more meticulous the relationship, the less sloppy, the more control and totalitarianism there is. Yes, my perspective has changed, but my grandmother herself also made broken and complex works.

So is there still something handed-down here?

Among the things I learned from her, my grandmother also instilled in me superstitions. Never to enter the studio without bread and salt. I have been doing this since my first home. I always have a bag of salt and a slice of bread in my cupboard. Maybe it is the promise that if you do what you are supposed to do, it will protect you. You know, when my grandmother was a girl in school they were asked in class what the most important thing in life was. Some of the children said the country, others said the party. Aggie said, “Art and love.” I think she was right. Maybe in the end, all that is left is love.