By: Sophia Dekel Caspi

Hadas Levi, graduate of the Department of Art at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem (1995-1999), is an artist who examines human individual existence and the relationship between the individual and the environment in the figures she draws, mostly women.

This self portrait is part of a series of family portraits which she created along the years, into which personal biographical layers are weaved. In her frontal portrait Levi wishes to catch her father’s presence using items belonging to him, such as the shirt and tie she is wearing. Remnants of memory are bound to the Other, male presence, through which she experience a kind of metamorphosis. Levi breaks out to her portrait in the mirror, and quickly withdraws into herself. The conflict is not necessarily familial, between father and daughter, but also hints to gender indecision, playing with the thought of “If I were a man...”

Levi looks for a historical and contemporary common denominator, into which countless personal conflicts in the private circle, both close and far, are mingled, revealing both her and the other. Despite the drama occurring in the viewer’s presence, the enigma is not resolved. The portrait is only partly showing, one half of the face erased, including the mouth and the unkempt hair. The light blue men’s shirt is hanging from her slender body, not filling its cover, and the cold colors seem stylish with the red and blue tie, repeating in smears of red in the center of the face. The blurriness and the erasure create a difficult feeling indicating restraint or deadlock.