collage, 2021
This collage is inspired by the practice of shmita; a shabbat for the land. Every seven years, the Torah commands growers in Israel to let the land rest and go fallow. This practice allows farmers to take time away from their usual tasks and immerse themselves in Torah study. In modern times, observant farmers have improvised; found ways to grow produce that does not impact the land, using hydroponic methods, as one way to get around the prohibition. A combination of ancient and modern agricultural practices is depicted. With the prohibition in a Shmita year against harvesting anything that is grown in the Land in Israel, I present a workaround. These arches, complete with photovoltaic tiles, are growing fields that are not rooted in the land, rather, they are planted in the sky. Aerial growing fields also provide shade from the sun, where one can rest to study Torah, an important element of the Shmita year. The collage was made with re-purposed paper and a part of an earlier collage about Shmita that was not successful. All the collage elements are from my numerous files of topographic maps of Israel. No new materials were used and nothing was copied nor printed in the making of this artwork.
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