Avital Cnaani

Avital Cnaani received her M.FA from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and her B.Ed from The Midrasha – Faculty of Arts at the Beit Berl College. She received the Israeli Ministry Culture grant in 2024, and The Hendler prize in 2024. She received the Israeli Ministry Culture Award for Young Artists in 2009 and was an America-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarship recipient in 2004, 2005 and 2008. Since her first solo exhibition in 2004, Cnaani has had four solo exhibitions in Israel, including at the Herzliya Museum, Petach-Tikva Museum, Israel Museum in Jeruslame and Ein-Harod Museum. She has also had numerous exhibitions internationally, including at the George Kolbe Museum in Berlin Germany, Kuandu Museum in Taiwan Soma Museum in Seoul and Harlem Studio in New York.

Her works embody the meeting point of endless dimensionality. Engaging with the natural world from a sense of deep-ecology, manifested in imagery, materiality and frame of mind; forming primordial animals, pieces of frayed land, weathered vegetation, existing on infinite horizons, floating in seemingly endless waters.

Nowadays, etching forms my main medium of operation. Unlike traditional line based etching which requires a meticulous and exact preparatory process, she employs a different methodology, using old and discarded plates with all their surface imperfections. Cutting these into rough shapes, she prints them in layers and fields of color. Working in the blues and greens of the waters, her shapes float in and around each other, performing a delicate choreography of harmonious im-balance, precarious tranquility as she searches for an inner quiet realm.