Milk Diary

Shani Weiss

Curator: Nir Namir

11.05.23-10.06.23

Milk Diary

In the solo exhibition Milk Diary, Shani Weiss presents paintings in varying techniques and sizes which she created following, and as a result of, the birth of her first daughter. Watercolor and gouache paintings, on small sheets of paper, are scattered throughout the gallery space, like short poems or quick scraps from an immediate experience, gently leading and nudging towards the wide scale scenes depicted in the large paintings she has created in oil and acrylic on canvas. 

In this body of work, Weiss reveals her process of entering motherhood: For a period of several months, the kitchen table’s spot in her home served as a temporary, makeshift studio. Papers and paints mixed with porridge, rice and milk absorbed the intimacy of the household and everyday activities. Through this process, in which the experiences of creativity and new motherhood became intertwined, a continuing series of works was produced in watercolor and gouache on paper. Later, upon her return to the studio, the works on paper constituted the basis for large works on canvas, as if converting the act of small, quick painting into an expansive physical work. 

The painting process was accompanied by the continuous movement of spontaneous writing, like some sort of urgency to document the quotidian. Thus, Weiss composed short and rapid lines, which in many cases later were transformed into a painted image, or an image with text beside it. The works were created as visions, as an act that cleans out the subconscious, a kind of ‘practice’ for seeing reality through a placated perspective with the new nature of the maternal mundane. 

About the artist 

Shani Weiss, born in 1988, in Nataf. Works in Tel Aviv. Painter, graduate of the Shenkar Multidisciplinary Art School; the student exchange program at HAW Hamburg University, Germany; as well as the Alma Fellowship Program, Alma Home for Hebrew Culture, Tel Aviv. In 2016 – 2017, she lived in the Negev and participated in the “Redline” residency program in Beer Sheva’s Old City. She was awarded the “Committee for Promoting Creativity” prize for artists from the Negev. Weiss had a solo exhibition at the Maya Gallery in Tel Aviv and has participated in group shows in various exhibition spaces: The Museum of Philistine Culture in Ashdod; the Nachum Gutman Museum; the Chanut Gallery; the Trumpeldor Gallery, Beer Sheva; the Mytro Gallery, Hamburg; and more. Her works are in the Knesset art collection as well as in private collections. 

Exhibition Season: Flooded

The exhibition Milk Diary is the tenth of the 2022-2023 exhibition season, dedicated to the theme: Flooded.

We live in an era that is flooded and flooding. The world is overflowing like a river. While we must flow with the current, we actually have trouble keeping our heads above water, especially with FOMO hovering above us. Boundaries melt in the spheres of the psychological, consciousness and the physical, corporeal, geographical. There are too many possibilities and choosing between them is confusing.

Through the series of exhibitions “Flooded”, Alfred Gallery seeks to anchor islands in the unending flow of events, images, talks and words. Although the flooding is uncontrollable, it is not passive. It is a conflict arena, an upheaval that threatens to spill over, it is movement, struggle and conciliation. The artists selected to exhibit during this year have proposed exhibitions and events that consider different aspects of the exhibition season's title.