NYAB Event - Noa Shay "The Child is Gone"

Noa Shay "The Child is Gone"

RESOBOX Gallery

This event has ended.

“The Child is Gone” deals with subjects of loss, grief, hope and renewal. It relates to times in our lives when great forces seem to determine our fate, sometimes hazardously. This is the situation in both Noa Shay’s country, Israel, and in Japan. Israel – where an ongoing war conflict keeps threatening the region, and Japan – a country that suffered the traumas of war and of a devastating tsunami, and is now still recovering from both.

Many of the sculptures in the show are of small children. The child is a symbol of hidden wishes, innocence and renewal. At the same time, there is an apprehension that what is now most vulnerable may later become part of the front-line of a conflict .This awareness to the beauty and fragility of life is very prominent in Japanese culture (as exemplified by one of its famous symbols – the cherry blossom).

In addition to children, pregnancy is also a recurring theme in the pieces. It signifies transformation and change; it is both the creation of a new life and the fundamental change of another. Noa Shay found inspiration in mythology and symbols from different cultures, mostly involving female characters. One of them was the story of Izanami-no-Mikoto, a Japanese goddess of both creation and death, and the creator of the first land together with her husband. It touches upon themes of fertility, death, land and chance which she explores in her work.

Noa Shay graduated from the Jerusalem Studio School in 2002 and received a MFA in painting from Brooklyn College in 2005. Her work has been shown in Israel and New York and her pieces are in the collection of the Israel Museum of Art. Her piece “Wish” was part of the M2M project for Riverside Park South in 2011 and 2012