Rubi Lebovitch

Home Sweet Home- My photographs deal with domestic scenes captured in straightforward images. The scenes can be divided in to two main categories: inanimate objects and human scenarios. Both categories are characterized by mystery, vagueness and absurdity. I create a twist in familiar sights and build new contexts, thus endowing the scene with new meaning. Mundane objects and domestic spaces are transformed into something strange and surprising. Like in surreal paintings, a new and impossible reality is created. At times, my photographs can be seen as an illusion of the Theatre of the Absurd, an illustration which takes place in the house. My images do not contain a clear-cut story or plot. The characters are inscrutable to the viewers and difficult to identify; their relationship with the world around them is senseless and they fail to communicate. Rationality is substituted by a twisted and exaggerated worldview. I employ multiplicity of objects, allowing the objects to grow stronger and take over reality; they occupy and control the space. In most of the photographs, the focus is on the objects, as such, they become the center of power, emphasizing loneliness and emptiness. The restlessness characterizing my work is connected to Freud's concept of the Uncanny, which locates the origins of horror in the homely and familiar. The scenes depicted in the photographs emphasize what usually remains hidden: the repressed, which cannot be described. The anxiety these scenes arouse undermines the peacefulness and security usually associated with home.