Tamar Ben Shaul   

Tamar Ben Shaul, born 1962, lives and creates in Ramat HaSharon. Ben Saul is a graduate of the Master of Professional Studies (MPS) program in Interactive Telecommunication from NYU (1994), has a BA in Fine Art from Bezalel (1987), and is a licensed teacher of art from Kibbutzim College of Education. 

In recent years Ben Saul collaborates closely with curator Revital Ben Asher Peretz. Tamar Ben Saul works are mostly made up of oil on canvas paintings and pictorial installations.  Her works present a figurative, naturalistic point of view that carries with it symbolic meanings. Ben Saul uses images that have been widely treated in art and culture, and have a certain consensus reading attached to them. She explores these readings from a personal point of view, which in turn affects their cultural and social reading. 

Tamar Ben Saul took part in numerous group and solo exhibitions in Israel, among them a solo exhibition in Beit Binyamini in Tel-Aviv in 2012.

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Artist Statement

My artistic process is comprised of various different projects joined together to become one. In each project I present a slightly different relationship between the pictorial language and the narrative content it depicts. But there is a common thread to all of them – it is an observation of reality, and a desire to tell a story through an object or a symbol. In this text I will focus primarily on my latest works, but that same recurring modus operandi is replicated in all my projects.

My current body of work revolves around a domestic environment. It describes a daily, mundane reality, yet it contains within it stories from my own personal and collective past. The series includes a number of central themes such as dogs, domestic textile, various decorations and decorative objects. There is a common denominator among all these domestic environments - the image of a rug. This image is used to define a symbolic and concrete concept of an ideal home. Yet the rug does not denote the stability and security of home. Rather, it appears at impossible angles and cuts. These are interlocked with a composition that displays multiple points of view, creating a sense of instability and an unresolved space that cannot exists.

Alongside the rug, the other themes are decorative objects that can be found in many homes such as African statues. These objects present a general portrait of domestic decoration. However, they are also specific to my own personal mythology and my family’s biography. These objects represent actual people and family members, physically absent from the painting. They act as a reminder of the person who brought them home, chose them, laid them out, and lives around them.