Becky Mayner came to live in the Jessy Cohen neighborhood when she was one year old. She left it when she was eighteen, and has never returned.
Mayner documents Jessy Cohen slowly, using paper and glue, adding and removing layers. Her work joins other projects and activities in the neighborhood operated by the Israeli Center for Digital Art which also engaged in documentation and collection of materials. The focus on these practices is associated with the fact that despite being one of Holon’s oldest neighborhoods, Jessy Cohen has hardly been documented. It has no history. On the other hand, it does have a reputation. It has a problematic image which has been fostered throughout the years of its existence. The need to document and preserve the neighborhood’s memories from its residents in the past and present became critical as a means to grant it presence in the public space, as a way of validating its residents’ memories, and providing it with a different narrative.
Since these are not academic documentation methods, and in many cases the documentation is part of artistic work processes, it is precisely the slow, lingering work, work that does not attempt to capture reality and respond to it in real time, that can provide us with a new perspective. This was the case with artists Aviv Kruglanski’s and Vahida Ramujkic’s “Documentary Embroidery” project, which documented Jessy Cohen in embroidery; this was the case with artists Effi & Amir’s “Jessy Cooks” project; and this is also the case with this project by Becky Mayner.
Mayner almost always starts with a photograph of the neighborhood. The photograph is processed into a collage by gluing pieces of paper, layer upon layer. The glued, concealing pieces of paper then undergo peeling to reveal that which is concealed. The end result is an accurate documentation from the perspective of someone who still belongs, but is already on the outside. In many respects, Mayner’s work techniques are a continuation and development of those used by her father, who was also a painter.
Nevertheless, Mayner’s is not a nostalgic view – not in terms of her work techniques, and not of the neighborhood and its diverse population. Although Jessy Cohen had already gained the reputation of a high-crime neighborhood when Mayner lived there, she remembers it as a safe place. She goes on to say that she was never afraid to walk around the neighborhood on her own, and never distanced herself from it, or felt ashamed of it.
The big difference between the neighborhood as it has been preserved in Mayner’s memory and Jessy Cohen today, she explains, is that today the house exteriors more accurately reflect the hardships within them. Things that were concealed and remained in the private domain in the past, are nowadays visible on the exterior walls, and reflected through the cracks, the exposed pipes, the closed balconies, and other familiar characteristics of apartment houses in Israel.
The exhibition is the continuation of a series of exhibitions by Jessy Cohen artists at the Center for Digital Art. We are proud to be a home for local artists, and hope to continue showing additional exhibitions by artists who are residents of the neighborhood.
Becky Mayner (b. 1956, Columbia). In the 1980s she studied at Avni and Kalisher, and then for an additional two years at Tel-Hai Academic College. She engages in painting, drawing, collage, and print. For her livelihood she works with glass and as a drawing teacher for children and youth. She has shown woodcut prints at the Horace Richter Gallery in the past. This is her first solo exhibition.
Eyal Danon and Udi Edelman
The CDA's archives are operating with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund and Artis
