Dr. Marina Arbib
was born in Italy, where she absorbed her distinct sensitivity to aesthetics, nature and culture. For the past several years, she has been teaching Jewish European philosophy and Twentieth-Century Italian culture at the Reichman University.
Before joining the Reichman University, Dr. Arbib taught at Tel Aviv University and was a senior researcher for the Italia Judaica Project (Diaspora Research Institute). She was also a visiting professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.
"The Voices of Silence - Changes in Perspective"
Every fragment of life acquires dignity if taken in its absolute singularity.As we take a truly new look at nature and still life, we discover a reality different from the one the eye is used to seeing. Details that usually escape us metamorphose suddenly into images of unexpected significance: pine needles meld with grass in a variety of colours; an entire world is visible in a puddle of water; a fallen sprig lying in the street blossoms in beauty.
It is not only changing nature that enchants me but also the alterations that time makes on artifacts: "still life" encompasses items created by humans---objects, walls, structures are transformed by processes of deterioration, peeling, breaking down over time to become reborn, to live again as something different from their original purpose. These objects continue to exist as themselves; yet their metamorphoses expose us to a world of wonder as amazing as nature's.
When we discover, with the eyes of our imagination, that we have the ability to alter proportions, then an imaginary landscape can begin to flourish. The micro reveals the macro: a water-stained, bubbling wall becomes the crater of an unknown planet; a peeling wall yields the image of a prehistoric drawing; in a decrepit wall's cracks, a face suddenly materializes, showing the trace of a prisoner trapped in a deserted house.
