The Freedom to Flow - ARTura Studio, Jaffa, 2007

These works by Tal Eshed were born of a focus on the beauty of the world, the need for rectification, the necessity of love for flowing serenity, contributing to the creative environmental quiet. Romanticism tempered by eroticism, sentimentalism associatively combining memories of past worlds, inner mysterious worlds, all of which connect the viewer from observation of the outer wrapping into the artist's deep inner world. Tal Eshed's works were created using a unique technique that combines multiple photographs on a single image, fixing and translating the special way she looks through the lens of her camera into visual documentation of colorful and formal moments.The feminine body lies on the surface of the water, floating among violet-colored flowers, creating a dream-like, sometimes surreal fabric of utopian worlds and practicalities of everyday existence. Tal Eshed disconnects herself from the reality that envelopes every moment and point of our lives. She calls us to take an hour of quiet for ourselves, moments of silent serenity, of moments that flows in space, becoming one with nature and experiencing the meditative effect of contact with water.

There is something so special in the artist's election to engage in work of so personal a nature, and which is partly devoted to therapy and giving to others. This distinct perspective, and the desire to share and participate, create a unique dynamics and interaction with the viewers. The art created in this way benefits from unique resources of identification, and pre-determined empathy. The artist has devoted many years in studying and experiencing techniques of creativity and healing. In Auroville, India, Tal studied various techniques of water therapy. Recently she completed her masters degree in Expressive Arts Therapy and Plastic Arts. She was awarded her bachelor's degree in Arts from Bezalel Academy of Arts of Jerusalem where she majored in Video and Photography. At the beginning of her professional career, she studied at the School of Visual Art in New York, USA. As part of her formative experience as a therapist, she studied at the Reidman College of Complementary Medicine, majoring in healing, and also completed diploma studies in psychotherapy at White Lodge, London, the Centre for New Directions. Her diverse and numerous experiences in these means are reflected in her work.

Curators: Esty Drori and Doron Pollack

My own search for quiet was a journey of experiences, experiments, memories and peeling away of layers of questions, conflicts, inhibitions and thoughts at varying depths bound by complex ties, in an attempt to understanding the meaning of our existential foundation as human beings – connecting for the sake of separation, and separating for the sake of connection. Where does the life of the individual begin? Does it begin at conception, with the meeting of the egg and sperm? Does it occur in the connection to the mother during pregnancy? Or from the moment of birth and separation from the mother? Perhaps it occurs in the search for individuation that develops over years, or the search for and connection with a lifetime partner? Perhaps in the small separations of passing life events? The conflict between dependency and independence. Also, the attempt to understand the concept of freedom – What is freedom? What sensations does the body experience as a soul? Is the body a frame and image that we hold on to, or perhaps it is a restrictive enclosure? Is "togetherness" the goal or the path? Perhaps it is the heart that experiences pain and occasional suffering, as well as occasionally quiet and silence. Is silence a vacuum? Is silence the space, the nothingness inside us, or perhaps the outside concealment? In a state of submission, becoming settled, offering acceptance and letting go – does another emotion arise, an emotion of existence in a given moment, in the layers and eons of that moment, an emotion that feels whole, true and precise?

Water and their wonderful cleansing and purifying properties are a key motif related to the value of life and purification in many religions and cultures, from Judaism to Hinduism. Our first habitat in our maternal womb, many years ago, largely contains water and other fluids. Immersion in water is a universal experience that some of us remember as a positive experience, while for others is a traumatic, negative experience. Still others have no memory of the experience at all. Still, our own bodies, largely made of water, remember and retain these memories.

Dr. Masaro Amoto, who devoted his life to the study of water, established a unique project in Japan in (2003). He based his research on the property of water to receive and absorb information. Despite the belief that all water appears to be identical, due to its identical composition, in fact bodies of water differ by people's attitudes toward water, and their location. Water changes its quality according to the information they absorb. The information in the water is reflected in the crystallization of the water's mineral contents. In effect, the crystals reflect the information contained in the water. The water's energy changes according to the environment, and the information receive from the environment, which leads to the claim that water reflects life itself. As Amoto described in this research, when he "spoke" to the water pleasantly and used positive terms, the water's structure crystallized and was magnificently beautiful, in contrary to when he used negative words which create fragmented and incomplete crystal structures. If this is true, is it possible that the womb, which entirely is made of water and other fluids, also absorbs meaningful primary information for the growing creature that begins its life the size of a bean, information that may affect the individual later in life? To what extent is it possible to impact and change the life of an adult, through immersion in water imbibed with the intentions of healing and changes?

Based on my therapeutic work with water, I tried to illustrate the images, the internal processes that the body and the soul experience: the decomposition, re-composition, the tempest and the imbalance – and the serenity; the water's wondrous ability to arouse and assist the individual to regain equilibrium in the body, through a journey of memories, thoughts, experiences of the mind and body, which ultimately lead to a sense of something new, something that has not familiar pattern; something than is transmutable and can be "aware presence" at a given moment without a body, something that is part of something else, something that dissolves and merges as part of existence and allows the individual to live a life of choice which is essentially the freedom to flow…. Tal Eshed.

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