10 Questions with Carmel Ilan

Carmel Ilan is an obsessive collector of abandoned texts. This no-man's land of abandoned books is an interesting position for her to start from. a space with no clear boundaries to define and limit herself without the rigid rules that characterized it before. Working with paper requires attention to the delicacy, crispness, and fragility of the material. Carmel’s images grow out of folded fields of paper. Reading is transformed into observation. The papers, carriages of text, preserve the material memory from which they came, and at the same time, grow into a new language.

Born in 1960 in Jerusalem, Israel, Carmel Ilan graduated from the Department of Fashion Design at Shenkar College in Tel Aviv and Parsons School of Design in New York in 1984 and 1986. She then worked as a lecturer in Shenkar, and as a freelance designer, before founding her own brand 'Ikoo' for children's furniture. In 2000 she started studying sculpture at Basis Art School, graduating in 2004. Since graduation, her work has been exhibited in dozens of exhibitions and fairs in Israel and abroad. This includes solo exhibitions at the Plaza Gallery in Tokyo, ZK Gallery in San Francisco, the Performing Arts Centre in Tel Aviv, the Wilfrid Israel Museum at Kibbutz Hazorea, Triumph Gallery in Moscow; as well as in group exhibitions at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv, the Artists House in Tel Aviv, Macadam Gallery in Brussels, the Jaffa Museum, Korner Park Gallery in Berlin. International fairs Ilan participated at Art Basel Miami, Art Central Hong Kong, Art Stage Singapore, the AAF Fair in Palm Beach, Fresh Paint Israel, and Art Toronto. Ilan lives and works in Tel Aviv.

www.carmel-ilan.com | @carmelilan19

Carmel Ilan, Welcome to Al-Tiba9. Could you tell us a little more about your background, and how did you begin creating art?

I was born in 1960 in Jerusalem, in the Abu Tor neighborhood, just near the wall that separated the Jewish and Muslim parts of Jerusalem. In 1967, I stayed at a shelter at my grandmother's house during the' Six Days War.' When we got back home, the wall was gone. The concept of borders as being fluid and changeable struck me and is central to everything I do. 

I grew up in a house where art was very much appreciated. My mother had a gallery that focused on Jewish art from around the world. Every week we would go to a gallery or a museum, and I loved the idea that people go to see things other people made and the big spaces with no furniture. 

I went to study fashion design in Shenkar, which is the basis of all that I did later in my practice. Building a fashion collection includes historical research, development, experimentation, and manipulating what you saw into something new. 

Then, I gave birth to my first child. I then noticed there was no consideration In Israel at the time for children's furniture. I've always loved carpentry and wood and started making furniture for my children without realizing it became a shop, which became a 3 store chain. For ten years, I was designing furniture and running the business. 

Paradoxically, when I had my third child, I felt the business was taking too much of my time and decided to sell and stay home. I quickly realized that staying home wasn't for me, and I decided to fulfill my dream and study sculpture. That was 20 years ago, and I never looked back.

How do you define yourself as an artist?

I choose not to define myself – neither as an artist nor as a person. I find it restricting. I aspire to go to unfamiliar places. 

What do you see as the strengths of your project, visually or conceptually?

I feel my language is new. I like that it takes a moment to understand what you're seeing. Paper is a warm and inviting material. The surprise is a big element in my work. 

My works don't fall neatly into the conventional definitions of painting or sculpture; they are somewhere in-between. 

Is there a piece you consider a "breakthrough" in your career, in terms of approach, subject matter, and aesthetic?

When I was in my forties, after two previous careers, one as a fashion designer and the other as a designer of children's furniture, I returned to school to study sculpture at Basis School of Art. In my third year of studies, we were asked to create a self-portrait. I felt that the materials I'd been working with up until then couldn't define me. Instinctively, I was drawn to a pile of old magazines that were sitting on my worktable, and I created my self-portrait - from cuttings from these magazines.

I was seeking a material that would speak to me, and I discovered I felt comfortable working with used paper. It's readily available, and highly charged – and enabled me to express myself freely, for the first time I could remember.

I deepened my relationship with used paper, experimenting endlessly with its technicalities. As these explorations continued, the works began to flow from within me, and I felt connected.

The work titled "Home" was one of the first I created, and it excited me. I felt I had finally found "home," and I never left.

Do you choose your paper emotionally or visually? Can you talk about the process of creating your work?

I create an array of pages taken out of encyclopedias, notebooks, magazines, old books, and journals. I also use the richness of paper pages: the colors and hues, the text density, the beauty of various languages in print, the fonts and typesetting, and the thickness of the paper. 

Paper becomes my palette, although I never manipulate or interfere with the surface of each piece of paper.

I collect discarded books I find in the street and bring them to the studio. I strip the book from its binding, separate the pages, cut them up strip by strip, and then patiently fold each strip. Over the years, as my intimacy with the material deepened, the paper folds became more diverse and related to the paper itself and my connection to it.

The handwork preserves within itself ancient crafts such as weaving, sewing, and knitting. Actions that are not mechanical and not precise – the mistakes I make give the work-life and are embedded within the works. 

The fragility of paper dictates the pace of the work. Ultimately, the works are composed of row upon row of folded paper placed next to each other with the side of my thumb. It's a meditative process - once I'm in it, I let go of thoughts and do them.

How do you keep yourself up to date with the latest trends and technologies that have today a significant impact on artistic productions?

I am very much interested in the technical possibilities that paper has to offer. When I first started photographing the works, they seemed quite flat, and this is when I first became aware of scanning techniques. 

I found myself developing a folding language that is compatible with scanned works, intricate and sisyphic. The scans transform the actual object, via metamorphosis, into a new object, a flat representation of something that once was something like the paper itself. 

The scanned image highlights certain characteristics of the sculpted works that are hidden in the original work. It allows me to go deeper and explore further and get into the works' depth while creating a new object from the old, which was also made from the old - paper.  

What do you hope that the public takes away from your art?

I can only hope that people who look at my work have an emotional response - that it moves them.

What's the thing that has continuously surprised you about the art market over the years?

I've been seeing a process of returning to craft, to the renewed use of traditional techniques in contemporary art. And this makes me very happy.

What do you wish you knew about Contemporary Art before you got started?

Nothing. My lack of knowledge enabled me to develop my own language, which wasn't connected to any previous artistic disciplines, although, of course, builds on them in one way or another. 

Finally, are there any projects you are currently working on and able to speak about?

I am working on a project I am very excited about. About ten years ago, I spotted some volumes of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica scattered on the pavement. It made me feel embarrassed and confused.

For me, the Encyclopaedia Hebraica was a kind of promise, something that was planned in 1944, before the establishment of Israel. 

As a child, I remember them on my parents' shelves as the most precious source of knowledge.

I am now dismantling all 33 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica into strips and interweaving them anew, in an attempt to create a new order as an alternative to the one that was projected then.

Through this project, I aspire to create a meeting place, a reexamination of the relationship between the vision, the dreams, and shared collective knowledge then - and now.