A story of women, “Scent of a secret” the Odelia Elhanani’s exhibition

From Thursday, March 31, and until Saturday, April 23, the Zaritsky Artists’ House in Tel Aviv welcomes the new solo exhibition of the artist Odelia Elhanani, “Scent of a secret”, a critical cultural dialogue.

Inspired both by “The Gleaners”, a painting by Jean-François Millet (1857), and contemporary pictures of Indian women captured by tourists, the key feature of the exhibition is a huge tapestry embroidered over several months by the artist together with a group of Bedouin women from the village of Lakiya. The Indian laundrywomen, the embroiderers of Lakiya and the sheets scattered on the floor of the gallery belong to women who have relinquished the “secret”. At the center of the composition emerges a river, its beginning embroidered on the tapestry, and flowing into the laundry deposited along the floor.

Painting and photography merge in a past belonging to the present and where East and West come together in these slow feminine movements, unchanged in time and place. The image moves from top to bottom, the visual art intellectualized by the hard work of the women’s hands. Washed in the waters of the river, enveloping the viewer in a strong smell – the clean and pure smell of powder detergent; this is the story of laundrywomen and embroiderers, of women in general.