The works in the exhibition “Tincture of Dreams” were inspired by the film Don Emilio and His Little Doctors (1982) by Colombian anthropologist Luis Eduardo Luna. The film, which features at the exhibition, is one of the first documentaries on the use of the ayahuasca by mestizos in the Peruvian Amazon. The film follows a local "vegetalista" (medicinal plant shaman), tracing his path to accumulate knowledge and healing powers directly from the plants. Through a rigorous diet and a monastic regime of isolation, he proves his commitment to the plants and wins their trust. Their spirits then appear to the shaman in visions or dreams in which they teach him their healing and protective songs.
The way in which the indigenous population of the Peruvian Amazon bond with Nature as depicted in the film moved and intrigued artist Tamar Rozenblat, hearing people who saw Nature as a living body with which humans live in harmony, with the capacity to assist us and provide answers and healing. The idea that a medicinal plant can arouse identical images and dreams in the brains of different people led Rozenblat to think that perhaps the dreams are embodied in the plant: dreams that carry a therapeutic power. Thus we can read Rozenblat’s works as a gateway to a different consciousness – “plant consciousness” – within which she seeks to capture these dreams and record their images.
The paintings invite viewers to an experience of becoming assimilated into the dream and embarking on an illogical journey without any exit points, peeking into an “other” state of existence. In her works, Rozenblat opens a window onto a space dense with watery, transparent, and airy forms, an expanse populated with open, contour-less organic, biomorphic, dynamic shapes, reminiscent of underwater creatures, snakes, ear canals, microscopic life-forms, biology lab instruments and other elements from the field of biology, moving around in an aquarium or projected onto a screen. The rectangular format of the works encloses the writhing forms crowded within the borders of the surface on which an infinite perspective is formed through the use of transparent colorfulness, layering, blending, and interweaving.
Numerous artists throughout history, inspired by Nature, have attempted to represent invisible realms and sometimes communicate with them. Since the late 19th century, scientific discoveries and instruments that enabled a gaze beyond the threshold of everyday vision have offered artists an unparalleled rich vocabulary of forms that enabled them to link physical and spiritual worlds, which became a major characteristic of the aesthetics of Surrealism. Rozenblat also marks the mid-point between the visible and the invisible layers of reality, when at certain points concrete plant elements "scar" the painting’s surface. Through her artworks, she seeks to encourage a reconnection to Nature through concepts of beauty, as she understands and imagines them. In this way, she joins the many artists engaged in the modes through which humankind can rehabilitate its relationship with Nature after centuries of colonization, control, destruction, and exploitation that have led to the unprecedented climate crisis we are now facing.
Translated from Hebrew: Judith Appleton.