[ August 2025 ]
In Fog
LOCATION
CURATED BY
PHOTOGRAPHER
Periscope Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
Shlomit Paldor Grant
For the past three decades, Hannah Rothschild has been creating a body of work. Oblong and rounded objects, bodies, wrapped and bound. A single image persists, recurring in variations, encapsulating countless moments of experience. The works evoke a simultaneous sense of becoming and of being undone. They convey a will to decipher the meaning of the image and its constant allure.
Rothschild is a graduate of Bezalel, an artist, curator and clinical social worker specializing in complex trauma. The body of work on display here is borne of a personal and professional need to touch upon that which eludes the eye- an unheard pain, physical sensations enclosed within protective layers, cloaked in transparency, almost invisible.
In the installation "Veiled" Rothschild creates a negative inner space which floats horizontally within large semi-transparent polyethylene sheets, hanging thickly. The viewers are invited to occupy the cavity and to experience the new perspective it offers; to distance themselves from their surroundings; to resign to the delicate motions, the sounds, the rhythm, to be encompassed.
Light and air pass through the small spaces between the sheets. Someone standing inside is supposedly hidden behind the hanging layers. Inside, the circles grow inward, in an imagined perspective inside the body, a time tunnel, a birthing canal or a dissociative mental construct. However, the transparent material and the gaps between the screens slice the viscosity of the mistimed and become peeping holes from the outside in. A viewer that is standing inside is both sheathed and exposed at once, protected momentarily and yet longing to be expelled from the belly of the fish and set ashore.
Nearby floats a work titled "body of shade" - the positive shape removed from its counterpart. This piece too is composed of accumulating layers, resembling cross section images which combine to paint the hidden "bigger picture". The viewers' eye travels between the layers, connecting the dots, spinning imaginary thread into a cocoon.
"Ocean Womb", "Greenhouse" and "Served" contain abstract images that allude to the body and the expanse of space. Materials utilized in agricultural nurseries seem to resemble bodily membranes and tissue, resounding formative experiences and memories. Colored thread is tied and unraveled, bringing to mind an eyeball, as though suggesting a peer into the body and from within it.
Layering is a recurring motif in the exhibition, and in Rothschild's work in general. The work suggests a duality of gaze and sensation. A will to observe as well as a will to engage in experiences, collect within the work. It offers a clear view within a thick haze, a sense of connection and detachment alike. The work seems to sway the viewer in and back out, withstanding the ebb and flow, residing in the eye of the storm.
ARTWORK









































