Gefen Barkal Shapira

Barkal Shapira’s work explores the concept of home, both as a physical structure and as an evolving emotional landscape. She examines states of stability and instability, wholeness and fracture, and the ongoing attempt to hold onto a structure even as it begins to lose its defined form.

Growing up in the desert, surrounded by simplicity and stillness, alongside a deep connection to music that was woven into everyday life, shaped the way she experiences material, space, and form. Her works emerge from a practice rooted in classical metalsmithing and traditional techniques, employing fire, melting, and repetitive acts of construction and transformation. For Barkel Shapira, material is not merely a medium but a collaborator – it resists, distorts, and reconstitutes itself, mirroring internal processes of endurance, adaptation, and care.

In the series Quiet Houses, she creates sculptural forms that resemble houses yet remain incomplete and unstable. These works inhabit a tension between destruction and beauty, fragility and refinement. The structures bear traces of damage and disintegration, while simultaneously assuming a meticulous, at times jewel-like presence. This contrast does not seek to aestheticize pain, but rather to allow vulnerability and beauty to coexist within the same space.

The studio process unfolds over time, often in solitude, through attentive listening to both material and body. Within a reality marked by uncertainty and external noise, making becomes an act of returning home – to oneself, and to the possibility of rebuilding. By opening and revealing these processes, Barkel Shapira creates a space for both personal and collective connection, where pain, memory, and healing can exist side by side.
Supported by Harel and ZURICH