Orna Ben-Ami

Orna Ben-Ami is a voice of great empowerment and cultural value who brings out the physical and emotional weight of the journey through welded iron. 

EARLY LIFE
Orna Ben-Ami was born in Rehovot (b.1953) and was raised in Ashdod, Israel. The most significant childhood memory that she recalls is the loss of her sister Dalia. Dalia died at the age of 12 when Orna was only 6 years old. Orna continues to carry this trauma and expresses it in her art. Another aspect that influenced her and is a great part of her art is the constant change she had to go through as her family moved from city to city. In all the experiences, farewell and grief, coping alone with difficult situations, being side by side with hope and happiness are what guides her in life as an artist.

PERSONAL LIFE
To Orna, family is the most important thing in her life: her husband, Oded, 3 children, and 7 wonderful grandchildren. She tries to find time for both her family and art, to enjoy every minute of both.

EDUCATION & CAREER
Orna joins the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in 1971 and becomes the first female military correspondent for the Army Radio station in Israel. Following her military service, she works as a reporter and news editor for the Israeli Broadcasting Authority radio station and enrolls at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where she studies International Relations and History. After some time, Orna transitions from working with words to working with materials and begins learning goldsmith and silversmith at the Jerusalem Technological Center. Between 1990 and 1992, she moves to Washington, D.C., and starts to study sculpture at the Corcoran School of Art, and then she moved back to Israel for her studies in Art History at Tel Aviv University. Since 1994, Orna Ben-Ami has been a full-time artist living and working in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Artwork series

Exhibitions

Bundle of Life at Mishkan Museum of Art, Ein Harod June 2020 - September 2020

Orna Ben-Ami’s exhibition “Bundle of Life” joins several of her works of the past decade. Central to them is the exploration of personal and collective memory, of displacement and wandering, of absence and void, of farewell and detachment and ultimately: of the power of all those to recall the commandment to live. Ben-Ami states that she seeks to describe a situation wherein “The entirety of one’s experience and support is to be found in one’s suitcase. The packages hold up the person. The People featured are detached, lacking support and a place to call their own. They hold only what they have taken from the home they used to have.” She evokes this experience by sculpting in iron, as though wishing to fix her thoughts into the heavy, stubborn metal; by welding objects and figures and combining them with photographs. The installation ‘For the Trees’, that fills the museum’s central gallery, ushers the viewer into a world that is at once full and empty. Before us are trees ‘sketched’ in space, lacking both foliage and roots, they offer no shade nor provide consolation. They are inanimate objects whose sculptural function is in representing absence and void. From within this ‘naked forest’ the exhibition opens into its other axes: the series ‘Entire Life in a Pack’, ‘Transparent’ and ‘Shadows’, all merge to form an experience that is strongly moving, physical and visual.
-Written by Yaniv Shapira

Orna Ben-Ami: Longing and Belongings March 29, 2017 - May 8, 2017

Israeli artist, Orna Ben-Ami, creates highly symbolic pieces that originated from deeply personal meanings and shifted to universal subject of our lives. Orna Ben-Ami revisits the stories of her own life and other lives by sculpturing their belongings. She shines the lives with a longing for eternal memories. With Ben-Ami’s remarkable workmanship on the material, the solid iron yields to her hands and the welding becomes easy like sewing. The sculptures made from matte-finish iron remind of a drawing in the space or soft sculptures. The simplified lines or the background that highlight the essence of our lives offer enough imaginary space to invite the viewers to fill in their own memories. Her personal memory recalls collective memories and the collective memories of our history become a part of our own memory in a soft manner without imposing it. The various photographic prints juxtaposed with the sculpted belongings from the families and the refugees are a meaningful trigger. The viewers are able to reflect on the weight of their lives and evoke empathy towards each other’s lives in the era of global chaos.

Entire Life in a Package l World Tour Exhibition
2017-2019

Millions of refugees are millions of packages, suitcases...sacks. “Life packages” that hold the desire to survive. In it, they pack both hopes and pains. Behind every package there is someone looking for a place. The objects that people take, in one package, represent their identity and sense of belonging, their memories and hopes for the future.
Iron expresses the will to hold on strongly to the identity which the objects symbolize. It renders them eternal and meaningful, like metal monuments. Iron brings out the physical and emotional weight of the journey.
Orna Ben Ami “softens” the iron by cutting and welding in her own hands, as we attempt to soften life, but the message remains charged both on the personal level and the collective. The combinations that Ben-Ami creates between the images taken by Reuters’ photographers and her iron sculptures, are the heart of this exhibition. “Artists” she says “have to donate their part, through their artistic skills, for designing a better future”. 
-Written by Dr. Orna Yair, Curator

United Nations Headquarters, New York  February 27 – March 10, 2017 
Palace of Nations, Geneva June 2017 
Museum Villa Zanders, Bergisch Gladbach, Germany  December 2017 
Museum Villa Aurea, Agrigento, Sicily, Italy  January 2018
Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro, Matera, Italy March - April 2018
Casa Romei, Ferrara Italy May - September 2018
Archivio di Stato, Torino, Italy September - October 2018
The University of St. Gallen, Switzerland November 2018
The Dennos Museum Center, Michigan, USA February -May 2019
KIA, Kalamazoo Institute of Art, Michigan, USA  June - August 2019
Devos Art Museum, Northern Michigan University, Michigan, USA August - November 2019

films

The Iron Grandmother by Emily Sheskin

Waterfall Q & A
with Orna Ben-ami

Q: What is ART to you?
A: A way of life, desire, language, love.

Q: Which of your artworks is especially meaningful to you? And why?
A: A lot of my artworks, especially "Tearing" (the mourning symbol) and Point (the power of the feminine Ballet Slipper on the iron beam. Like a self-portrait of me).

Q: When do you know when you are done with your artwork?
A: When I feel that it expresses my feelings and message.

Q: Do you have a medium that you want to explore in the future?
A: Drawing

Q: Are there any failures or dark times in life? How did you overcome those times?
A: Losing my sister in my childhood. I had to overcome it by myself because my parents were busy with their own grief. The wars in Israel when I lost friends. I express the pain in my art. I need courage to do so.

Q: What are your three strengths?
A: 1)Expressing personal and universal feelings together. 2)The ability of a woman to create in iron. 3)The fact that my art is clear to the viewers and allows them to connect

Q: How would you want to be remembered as an artist?
A: One that donated to the world on the human aspects, and that made people think about their own feelings.

available works