2013

Sapir, Arava Desert, Israel

Site-specific installation

Curated by Avi Nevo and Assa Bigger

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In the Arava Desert I visited the agricultural community of Ein Yahav and was given 150 kilos of tomatoes. I made the work at Sapir, in the desert. I cooked them into a thick sauce and left it to dry on flat surfaces for a full week in the desert heat. The result is Tomato-Leather: a perishable crop turned into a durable, skin-like material. In this work the landscape is an active collaborator. Heat and time change the material, and the process draws attention to agricultural production, to transformation, and to the conditions of the desert. Tomato Leather gives the tomato a second form and life, held between food, matter and sculpture.
Alongside this process I made nine sculptural signs, Signs for the Sun. Each is based on an icon from an air-conditioner remote control: cooling, heating, airflow, temperature. Placing them in the open desert was both an ironic gesture and a playful offering, a quiet joke to the sun, which cannot be controlled.
The material returned in 2015, as the costumes of the Wanderers of the Body Orchestra and as 60 meters of Tomato-Leather in Seven Minutes in Heaven, in BODY = The New Religion.