In the last decades, female artists have identified with female crafts such as embroidery, sawing, patching or knitting, and have viewed these practices as liberating expression, and even acts of resistance, vs. classical oil on canvas male painting. On the other hand, Dina Schupak, born in Argentine in 1931, member of kibbutz Metzer, does not knit using wool, or embroidery threads, but rather paints lace knitting and embroidery with very thin brushes, in a meticulous technique, and in-patient, measured slow pace. Her images are frontal and iconic, conceptual rather than wild or liberated.

The internal conversion of the ‘masculine’ iconic painting paradigm into a female craft technique is characteristic of Schupak and her integrative approach. Anyone familiar with the history of her painting and the history of modernist painting recognizes their meeting point – Kazimir Malevich’s “Black Square”, first exhibited in 1915 as one of the pinnacles of twentieth century avant-garde, and a significant precursor of abstraction. Schupak encountered Malevich’s rectangle – minimalist, masculine and rational – as an art student and integrated it into her work. Ever since she has been weaving the three geometrical shapes representing Malevich’s Suprematism – square, circle, and rectangle – into female time and language: warp and woof, lace embroidery or knitting. Schupak does not cast-off the masculine tradition, but rather converts it from the inside. She invites Malevich to join her knitting, left eye – right eye – and again left eye, not without winking at political terminology of left and right and at a socialist tradition that she was educated in as a kibbutz member.

Knitted baby clothes by Schupak, grandmother of four and great-grandmother of three are not trying to be cute. The Knitted pullover is also a front –one – of a house. The baby bodysuit, painted without the baby, in a crucifying position. The knitted baby shoes, painted in downy white on a military khaki background, are titled “Peace Dove”: the military horizon menaces every moment of birth. Beside these, we see the “Hug” of two interwoven pullovers and the “Holding hands” of the knitted gloves.

In 1996 Schupak exhibited “Dowry” at the kibbutz gallery, where she painted for her husband, Martin, the dowry that they didn’t bring with them from Cordova, their home town: pillows and knitted sheets. In 2001 she exhibited her “Wedding Cake”, with a real wedding cake at its center – which Dina Schupak’s is famous for – built in layers and reaching as far as the ceiling. A video showed a bridal wreath thrown into the air, falling and thrown once again: Schupak’s reflection on the matrimonial institute, not renouncing love gestures to her partner. Yet, in her own eyes she is always a “Working Woman” – as stated by the title of her early key-work, combining Suprematist geometry, lace pattern and wood carving technique. A working woman works and paints, paints, carves and knits.

Tali Tamir

13.10.19