Joseph Semah

Joseph Semah was born in 1948 in Israel and lives and works in Amsterdam .

Desert deawings thirty-three boundaries (The Gulf War 1991)

The first day of the Gulf War,
Joseph graps a stack of drawing paper and starts to draw:
the skull of a female sheep.
This drawing became the starting point
for a combination of drawing and collage.

Every day of the war, he drew that same skull,
from the same position, as a start of a more elaborate drawing/collage.
Thirty-three drawings, thirty-three limitations.

Thirty-three drawings, of which the sequence does not really matter anymore;
the only drawing that counts is the one he made
the day his mother arrived in Amsterdam.
After all, the centre of all drawings is his mother, the woman.
For Joseph, the skull of the female-sheep is symbol
for the woman, the mother, the womb.

"Thrity-three drawings - thirty-three boundaries"
constitute the synopsis of a war,
but at the same time it is a monument for the woman,
the mother.

After thirty-three days, the war was over...