I June 2020 I went with my partner and my mom to the Womens March that happened after 11 womean were murdered since the beginning of that year. Despite the tragic circumstances I felt a lot of hope, inspiraiton and genuine solidarity. Buses full of women, in head scarves or in bikinis with writings on their bodies were shouting side by side. I felt I'm in a turning point in time, and yelled like never before, inspired by my mom.

About a month after I witnessed that news programs evrywhere circulate tirelessly a story about a topless protester who climbed on the menorah across from the knesset building. Somehow what was most urgent to comment and cover inside and out was the one feminst who is actually claiming back her right over her body and her right to speak up for herself and for other women. What seemed most important in days when women of all sectors and ages are murdered and raped disturbingly often is to disaprove this dangerous feminsit or just the act that she did, and anyway to make sure she is sanctioned because there are priorities - you don’t ever put a woman's body above emblem, not physically and not metaphorically. State's symbols would be protected at all cost, and women's bodies an unclaimed property. 9 more women were murdered until the end of 2020.

I couldn't verbalize these things half a year ago, so I atarted collaging over a menorah, which my favorite way to process new. I made a huge golden menorah but that is flat and made of posters' material. I stuck to it statistics about rape in israel and congested it with images: a gun pointed at the observer and fragile models selling jewlery. I wanted to stress that those don’t live separately but symbiotically and are two sides of the same coin.

When I heard the interview of Samech on the radio, it felt like everything I couldn't out in words before was phrased perfecly. She faced the anchor and the listeners with the sad irony of it all and with the chauvinisim that still lays in our speech and in how we view body and expression, and people versus symbols. I felt compelled to include her words as they are, an echo of personal and societal conscience. I had the privilege to speak to her on the phone and get her approval to use her voice and was met with compelling honesty and an uncomprmising social responsabilty.

Inside everything that was happening seemingly arround me, I felt what she did liberated me in the end. Samech enabled me a deeper freedom in my own body, and helped me channel out the anger towards the opressing mechnisms inside me, that censor me, and label my own exhibitionist needs inapropriate unless they are in a context comfortable for someone else.