The love behind loss. Commission by Stadsgalerij Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, 2025
               The Love Behind Efrat Zehavi (50) is an artist who loves listening to stories and visualising them in ceramics, pencil drawings or words. Her inspiration comes from her own life as well as encounters with strangers, believing that it helps both herself and others to express difficult emotions and hidden stories through art. Grief is a theme strongly intertwined with Zehavi’s life: a year before she was born, her parents lost their first daughter, aged two months. They kept it a secret until Zehavi was 14, and only then did she understand their unprocessed loss and the grief she had always felt. When Zehavi was 24, her partner died in an diving accident, after which her mother-in-law treated her like her own daughter. Zehavi therefore had a grieving mother twice, and twice took several years to process the grief herself and begin to breathe again. By joining meetings with the Schiedammers and speaking to them individually, Zehavi has got to know their stories and feelings. For each participant she has created, in her words, ‘a spiritual gift’. These not only represent the participant’s story, but also convey the artist’s wishes for them in response. https://stedelijkmuseumschiedam.nl/tentoonstelling/de-liefde-achter-missen-9-schiedammers-over-verder-gaan-na-verlies/
Curator and community programme: Dorien Theuns Exhibition design: Zoë Hollander Vertaling | Translations: Jack Eden Made possible with support from: het VSB Fonds, VriendenLoterij Fonds, Fonds 21 en het Mondriaan Fonds Project manager: Dewi Baggerman Technical production
Simon Fitskie, Bob van Lieshout |