From the Depths of the Earth

Earthworks in modern art, both worldwide and specifically in Israel—especially presently—engage with themes of time, transience, memory, and commemoration, largely due to their direct connection to the ground as a site of both life and death. For many artists, earth has become a space of memory, consolation, rehabilitation, and growth. This simple, primordial material is elevated into a connective substance between the tangible and the metaphysical. The work of Bitya Rosenak, who operates within realms of intuition, contemplation, and a deep bond with nature, is shaped precisely from this place. Rosenak, whose work is characterized as action-based art rooted in chance and in the investigation of unconventional materials such as soot, wax, oil, bleach, and mold, has learned to extract clay from the earth and to work with different types of soil combined with adhesives and wax. While continuing to sustain a tension between control and release, between material and form, between depth and surface, and between the exposed and the concealed, she allows disintegration, cracking, and random seepage to generate abstraction. The resulting works evoke microscopic images of cross-sections from the belly of the earth—raw, seductive layers charged with the emotional richness of hidden worlds. As an artist committed to maintaining authenticity in her practice, she does not hesitate to dig inward, reaching the root of her own being, into the womb of the earth, on a metaphorical regressive journey. This is a journey of temporary escape from the overwhelming flood of external events that continues to intensify, toward moments of grace—a space and time that allow healing through contact with the material and with the self, in the search for a new beginning.