Alejandra Okret

Nahshon Gallery, Kibbutz Nachshon
October 2005
Curator: Yael Kainy

Installation 3.40x 5.60 meters, glue , acrylic, ink, watercolor, pen on tracing paper.

"And orders the stars in their watches in the firmament according to thy will."  (The Sabbath Evening Prayer)

When the world was still uncharted, travelers used the stars as a map. This work was developed as part of the “Japana/Silk Road” project, and later took a life of its own. The project also constitutes a further step in the artist’s life-long interest in and observation of the stars in different geographical locations across the world. It is not an astronomically-accurate work, but rather a random scattering of stars across painted blue tracing paper, creating a patchwork of “pieces of sky”.

The work was presented as an installation as a floating carpet in a single room – open on the floor, like the maps consulted by medieval travelers. The positioning creates a sense of disorientation, of floating above the sky.