Radio interview with Francesca Placa during my artist residency in Berlin in Summer 2019
Part of open studios group exhibition, GlogauAIR Residency, Berlin, Germany, 2019
Paula Elion is an Argentinean-Israeli Artist working in Tel Aviv and Berlin. Elion graduated from the Midrasha School of Art, Beit Berl, Israel. Paula combines painting and drawing techniques, using found materials such as old tablecloths and bedsheets, cardboard, wood, and glass, along with oil paints, acrylic, charcoal, markers, etc. Her work explores universal conflicts and questions social rules and norms regarding family relationships, the female image in a patriarchal society, identity, migration, and gender roles.
In order to read and interpret her work, one has to think of the term “translation”. When we use a certain term or reference in different languages, it takes on new baggage and connotations. Drawing from her own experience as an immigrant, the act of painting becomes an act of meta-lingual translation; an act that transmits a variety of cultural contexts through the same “word” – or in her case – the same image.
Her current project at GlogauAIR deals with the dialectics of memory and loss, hope and kindness. Intentionally juxtaposing two vividly distinct German narratives, she contrasts the tragic figure of Magda Goebbels, who embodied the perfect Aryan beauty, loyalty, and motherhood during Nazi dictatorship with a group of refugees in Kassel today, and their new life in a democratic Germany. From darkness and horror to a more promising present and future, two very different realities from very different periods of time collide.
Justin Ross
Glogauair, Berlin 2019