Tal Hafner

Home Waters

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Ice sculpture from Mediterranean water and Atlantic ocean water, 15X17X20 cm, 2019

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The sea is where I feel at home. Growing up in Tel Aviv, my parents used to take me to the beach every Saturday. I grew up with sand in my fingers and salt water taste in my mouth and I loved it. With a relocation to New York in the Summer of 2019, when questions about what is my home hit the walls of my existence, I went to find the Atlantic Ocean.

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The day before my flight, I went to say goodbye to the Mediterranean. I packed my beach blanket wet and salty and flew across the globe with it. When reaching the beach of Coney Island, I took it with me into the water. Still carrying the relics of the previous salt water, I drenched it in the new ones. This work holds an almost impossible achievement- uniting Mediterranean water with Atlantic water. Touch only in Gibraltar, their merge is like an against the odds love making act.

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After a full drench, I went out of the water with the blanket and ringed it into a large glass jar. I repeated this action until the jar was full of merged waters. Then, I transferred the waters, being an exterior home, through my body, being an interior home, by creating a half-orbed mold in the shape of the back part of my skull, in reference to a globe: a perfect orb with the whole world in it. I poured the waters in it and created a hollow sculpture, that symbolizes the space between the waters, the distance between the homes, the experience of the absence, that although I did everything I could to fill, I could not.