Ceramc & plastic plant.
12"W x 21"Hx 6"D
2025
Tzelá
(A small word that holds something immense.)
 
The truth is, this piece wasn’t born from a clear idea.
It came to life like many things do in my life: from discomfort, from a question that won’t leave me alone, from a sigh while shaping the clay.
And it’s like… do we really come from a rib?
There’s a word in Hebrew — Tzelá (צֵלָע) — that’s always stirred something in me. It’s usually translated as "rib", but if you scratch beneath the surface, if you don’t settle for what you were always told, you’ll find it can also mean “side”, “flank”, even “shadow”.
And that already changes everything, doesn’t it?
It’s not just a bone. It’s an open space. A hollow. Something that’s given.
And it moves me to think that woman, according to that ancient story, wasn’t made from above or below, but from the side.
Not to rule, not to be ruled over — but to walk alongside. Close to the heart. Beneath the arm. That says a lot already.
And something cracks open in me when I remember that Jesus was also pierced in the side.
Right there.
And from that wound came water and blood. Life.
As if —yes, again— something new was being born from an open side.
The sculpture is made of clay, like us. Fragile, yes, but moldable.
And yes, there’s a fake plant sprouting from its head. It’s not real, but… it blooms.
Because sometimes our thoughts aren’t perfect or even fully authentic, but they’re there. They grow. They insist.
And what if that plant represents everything we think, everything we believe, everything we invent just to make it through?
This work doesn’t offer answers. I don’t have them either.
But it is an honest attempt to look again at that side.
To try —even just a little— to understand what it means to be born from a hollow, from another, from love.