Migration With Pomegranate

‘Migration with Pomegranate’, created with paint made from Judean Desert earth ground with oil, is part of a suite of works entitled ‘Migration’, of which the artist has commented: ‘The underlying lesson of my heritage is summed in a metaphor from my childhood; watching watermelons crated through Ramat Gan’s streets, I learned you can make anything grow anywhere, even the unlikely proposition of a fruit composed primarily of water growing in the desert’s rejecting soil and climate. The ingredients: ingenuity, a touch of heart, a lot of hard work. Today I see watermelons providing new seeds, as if carried by birds bringing something foreign to plant by way of their migration. Patterns of sunlight, perhaps more opaque and solid than their surroundings, house this hope’.

Pomegranates are traditionally consumed on Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) to symbolize fruitfulness; the (apocryphal) 613 seeds of the pomegranate corresponding to the 613 commandments of the Torah.