Ovadia’s ability to depict physical states of pressure and pain (licking thorns, a man being cooked on the stove, pinching) with direct and unbiased vividness reinforces the dissonance that informs her view of reality. The TV corner in the domestic living room, the garden outdoors, a table dressed with birthday decorations – in all these, the ostensibly safe, familiar, mundane banality masks a dark occurrence bubbling with biting acidity. The title of the exhibition proposes “The Sand Dunes of Rishon LeZion” as an allegory: an established, affluent, safe and proper suburb at the heart of the country, which conceals a lethal potential. By the same token, the protagonist of Orly Castel-Bloom’s novel Dolly City, a veterinarian, goes out to the sand dunes by the beach to bury her dead dog, and finds a deserted baby. Close observation of Ovadia’s works calls to mind a significant affinity with Castel-Bloom’s literary practice, realms in which the artist paves subtle roads of her own.

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