Hannah Naveh, like Chaya Ran, turns her childhood into painting after her mother's death. The works serve as a means of connecting to her mother. Nave finds an original way of illustrating her relationship with her mother with objects such as simple candlesticks, old pieces of lace, and bed sheets. The sheets of the dead mother become the platform of painting. Curved lines adorn a crumpled sheet and the mirror shows a contemporary abstract painting of a childhood that returns to memory from somewhere past to the present.

 

In the works in which Neveh's childhood neighborhood is located, there is also a reference to the public aspect, such as "Housing for Immigrants", which was quickly built and disintegrated quickly, without grace and beauty, and which received additions of storehouses and fences from its residents, additions that emphasized the difference between the new immigrants and the established inhabitants. The "soaps," as the new immigrants were called then, seem to be asked to shed their past, to forget the "little story" from there, and to adapt quickly to the "big story" that is taking shape here.

 

The physical separation from her childhood was made during the seven days after her mother's death, days of emotional return, days of self-reflection after years of emotional detachment. Naveh's childhood neighborhood, along with her mother's personal belongings, create a metaphorical, nostalgic series that illustrates the feelings and events of childhood.

 

 

Ora Kraus, "Drawers of Childhood", from the catalog of childhood drawers, The Municipal Art Gallery, Rehovot, 2004