Till my mind is at ease.
Nitsa Rona
2015
Until her mind is settled: Merav Rahat on Nitsa Rona’s exhibition
Metalsmith and jewelry designer Nitsa Rona uncovers the beauty in simple
things while distilling sensations, thoughts and moments into objects. In her
new exhibition “Until my mind is settled,” Rona presents two experiences. In
the first, she invites visitors into the worlds of content that drive her art through
three groups of objects that draw a connection between the environment,
body and soul. In the second, she gives us a glimpse into the artistic process
by means of a jeweler’s station inside the gallery space where she will work
for the duration of the exhibition. This combination of experiences immerses
us in a dialog taking place in the design field that examines the relationship
between theory and practical expression.
The exhibition opens with a ceremonial act of Rona placing flower
arrangements as a gesture of hospitality and invitation to enter her domain.
The precise compositions, which invoke Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower
arrangement, conjoin the spiritual with an affinity for nature and a culture of
hospitality, which is a dominant feature of the artist’s personality.
Within the gallery’s space, Rona lays out three groups of objects: “The lowest
place on earth,” “Curves” and “Point of view,” which encode meanings that are
both emotional and intellectual.
“The lowest place on earth” begins with the concept of “earth,” which forms
the basis of our existence and the ground out of which life emerges. In a
series of objects marked by motifs from the Dead Sea, Rona crystallizes
representations and memories of a place and landscape, creating milestones
in a personal journey of dialogue between the ground she treads and a world
of dreams and spirituality that she is climbing. toward.
The body – our physical essence – is represented by a series of rounded
sensual objects that Rona has dubbed “Curves.” Through these organic
shapes, she conducts a dialogue with the female body, its organs and
movements, examining relationships and meeting points between these
objects and the corporeal.
In “Point of view,” Rona’s incisive vision and striving for spiritual equilibrium
gain expression in a series of circular objects that integrate wood (ebony) with
silver. In this series Rona combines the conceptual essence of the eye as
window to the soul with symbolic representations of the perfect circle to
express an essence that contains everything and extends to infinity. Here,
too, Rona is very precise in her placement of objects in relation to the body.
She transforms the experience of putting on jewelry into an act of expanding
one’s consciousness as well as becoming stabilized and balanced.
Rona’s work is infused with stories and personal meaning while at the same
time driven by challenges she poses to herself in working with the material.
The experiences she presents in the exhibition makes it seem as though she
has emancipated herself from the practical side of things. In her freedom of
creation and experimentation with materials and technology, she appears to
depart from the preoccupation with the attractive and decorative in favor of
examining the essence. Nevertheless, as part of the inviting of visitors into her
world, she has brought a jeweler’s station into the gallery and will work there
for the duration of the exhibition, thereby connecting the conceptual to real life
and pracrice.
Rona is a goldsmith but for the most part uses simple materials, infusing them
with love that transforms them into objects of value. All of her decisions are
deliberate and each artistic choice has meaning. Rona lives and breathes the
material, as well as the shape and meanings she charges it with. She creates
ceremonies, loses herself in the artistic process, deliberates again and again,
takes pains over every detail, seeking, shaping, until her mind is settled.
