"Soma" is a new light-installation exhibition by artist and designer Ayala Serfaty that will open on Thursday, November 13^th 2008 in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art

Abut the exhibition
In Asia Hall there is an atmospheric light installation, a fragile, brittle work of art. An indecipherable tapestry of light that is both tangible and ephemeral. Delicate strands of glass are woven into spatial designs. The weblike structure goes through a second phase of "cocoonization" - the structure is sprayed with polymer that creates a kind of epidermis layer, a husk or casing.

In 2002 the artist began her research and this created the ‘soma': This is a work process that can be described as a kind of transformation of calligraphic drawing in three-dimensional form. This manual process is very labor-intensive and is done in collaboration with glass artists - Eytan Hall and Anna Gautier. Over these six years "natural landscapes" were formed and these finally coalesced into a topographical light installation.

Ayala Serfaty (1962) has come a long way since graduating from the Art Department of Bezalel and later from the Middlesex Polytechnic in London. In 1994 Serfaty opened her first solo exhibition in the Artifact Gallery in Tel Aviv. Since then her work has been exhibited in the international design exhibition in Milan and in solo and group exhibitions in museums across the country and around the world. These include the Centre Georges Pompidou (2002), Hamburg Art Museum (2003), טריאנלה די מילאנו (2005), Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum (2006).
This year some of the soma works were bought by the MOMA in New York.

Curator: Meira Yagid-Haimovici

• The exhibition will be open from November 13^th 2008 to February 14^th 2009

Opening hours:
Mon and Wed: 10:00-16:00
Tues and Thurs: 10:00-22:00
Fri: 10:00-14:00
Sat: 10:00-16:00

The Tel Aviv Museum
27 Shaul Hamelech St., Tel Aviv

Entrance fee: NIS 42

Photography: Albi Serfaty

Ayala Serfaty, from Soma installation, 2008