Dafna Rehavia working on
Binds & Bonds For someone with such a soft, gentle demeanor, Pittsburgh-based artist Dafna Rehavia has a penchant for sharp edges. This becomes apparent while exploring
Binds & Bonds, her in-progress, site-specific installation on view as part of a two-month residency at BOOM Concepts in Garfield. Among the piles of broken chairs wound in twine, yarn, and ribbons are exposed rusty nails and bits of metal wire. There are also tin can lids, broken glass, and jaguars, the sleek predator appearing throughout as cutouts hanging on a wall or stalking a painting.
Integrating threatening elements into symbols of comfort and healing (like chairs and a row of suspended IVs made partially from modeling clay) adds to a multi-faceted, ever-growing exploration of trauma. An artist statement describes how Rehavia “engages and deconstructs forms of symbolic violence through sculptural construction,” and the repetitive, ongoing process of tying and binding echoing the “emotional processing of trauma that may be personal, social, and intergenerational.”