Physicist feminist Karen Barad says: "objectivity is a matter of responsibility and not a matter of distancing". 
(From: an interview with Karen Barad in “Meeting Utrecht Halfway” June 6, 2009, the 7th European Feminist Research Conference, hosted by the Graduate Gender Programme of Utrecht University). 

In maternal subjectivity distance matters. Being close to life's beginning, indeed, being enmeshed with the materials and materiality of life at its origins opens up the possibility to knowledge. It is knowledge that emerges and being constructed by a dialogue with materials, bodies, cultures and histories; a dialogue that challenges social conventions. At the 'heart' of this way of knowledge there is responsibility. Knowing how to respond and develop this ability. In Barad's words 'respons-ability'. 

According to Barad: 
'There is not this knowing from a distance. Instead of there being a separation of subject and object, there is an entanglement of subject and object, which is called the “phenomenon.” Objectivity, instead of being about offering an undistorted mirror image of the world, is about accountability to marks on bodies, and responsibility to the entanglements of which we are a part.' 

'A painting's seeing itself', oil on canvas, 2017 (below) is shown as an object hanging on the wall and as moving images, filmed at different stages and from different view points, seen on screen/s. This wide way of looking at a painting creates a space of entanglement where many different issues can be explored as part of thinking about painting: what is it? and what does it signify today?  

   

YNG, 'A painting's seeing itself', Oil on canvas, 2017

YNG, 'A painting's seeing itself' - detail, 2017

Threads from 'A painting's seeing itself', 2017

Physicist feminist Karen Barad says:

'objectivity is a matter of responsibility and not a matter of distancing'

From: “Meeting Utrecht Halfway” June 6, 2009 at the 7th European Feminist Research Conference, hosted by the Graduate Gender Programme of Utrecht University. 

This quote connects with my painting Air’s Gaze (2016), describing the feeling-memory, the source from which it was ‘born’. ‘The existence of the terrible in every particle of the air’ writes Rilke. We breathe the same air; the air (if you can call it that) at the Nazi concentration camps in WWII, the air at the night of the attack on Samakh in April 1948, the air when I visited the place where this town used to be, as I stood on the asphalt of the car-park in the summer of 2009. ‘You breathe it in as part of something transparent; but within you it precipitates, hardens, acquires angular, geometrical forms in among your organs’. 

‘The existence of the terrible in every particle of the air. You breathe it in as part of something transparent; but within you it precipitates, hardens, acquires angular, geometrical forms in among your organs; for all the torments and horrors suffered at places of execution, in torture chambers, in madhouses, in operating theatres, under the arches of bridges in late autumn – all this is possessed of a tenacious permanence, all of it persists and, jealous of all that is, clings to its own frightful reality. People would prefer to be able to forget much of it; sleep files away gently at the grooves in the brain, but dreams drive it away and trace the lines anew. And they wake, panting, and dissolve the gleam of a candle in the dark, and drink  in the half-lit solace as if it were sugar water. …’ 

From: Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, p. 53.

הקטע הנ"ל מתקשר לציור 'מבט אוויר' (2016) ומתאר בדיוק את ההרגשה-זכרון שממנה נוצר הציור. הקיום של הנורא בכל חלקיק אוויר. אנחנו נושמים את אותו אוויר; האוויר (אם אפשר לקרוא לזה כך) במחנות ההשמדה במלה"ע השנייה, האוויר שהיה בליל ההתקפה על סמח' באפריל 1948, האוויר שהיה כשבאתי לבקר במקום בו הייתה פעם העיירה, עומדת על אספלט במגרש חנייה בקיץ 2009.  'את/ה נושמ/ת אותו כמשהו שקוף אך בתוכך הוא מתגלגל, מתקשה, מקבל צורות זוויתיות, גאומטריות בתוך כלי הגוף האורגניים'. (מתוך: רשימותיו של מאלטה לאורידס בריגה, 1909. כאן תרגום שלי. ינג). 

My main method of painting is pulling threads from old bed-sheets and arranging them on the canvas between layers of colours. When the paint dries the threads are removed, leaving their traces as part of the image. This echoes the experience of the maternal body and subject in the sense that there is a body within a body for a duration of nine months, then one body comes out of the other. What traces are left in the maternal body and how maternal subjectivity is affected by these traces?  

In my studio I filmed myself performing with one of my painting (entitled: ‘A Bullet-proof vest or Tzi-tzit?’ 2016). More specifically, I removed the threads and placed them on my face; however, I positioned the camera in a way that it captured my body only; the face is cut-off by the frame. This creates an opportunity to observe the relationship between the body of the painting, my own maternal body and subjectivity. 

כן. זאת טכניקה שנבנת על טקס התאבלות יהודי של קריעת הבגד, אך גם על דברים אחרים. תודה על ההתעניינות, גלי. עכשיו אכתוב גם באנגלית.

The question here is about the technique of placing threads between layers of paint. I develop this technique based on the Jewish ritual of mourning which includes tearing one's clothes, as well as on other things.

From: FB exchange, 5.7.2016

חוטים שנפרמו מסדינים ישנים מונחים בין שכבות צבע. כשהצבע יבש החוטים מוסרים ומשאירים סימנים בחומר. מעין 'דיאלוג' בין קנווס (כל מה שהוא מסמל) והחוטים עם כל הדברים שהם מעלים

The question was about the use of threads. The answer was: 'threads which were pulled from old bed-sheets had been placed between layers of paint. When the paint dries the threads are pulled off the canvas, leaving traces in the material. It is a kind of 'dialogue' between canvas (and all that it symbolizes) and the threads, with all the associations that they provoke.'

From: FB exchange 4.7.2016