Artworks

The Presencehood project is process based, including some 7 stages, such as movement, meditation in nature, channeling,  creating eco-art as a healing process. In this site, we show a series of inner landscape, created in several unque places in nature. "...This artistic document made of the very ephemeral quality and nature of life itself, done with a lens that turns inwards, projects outwards… Shai Zakai...communicates this through her intuitive analog photos of time, light, place, and above all – the journey. The journey her art describes is near Biblical, as ancient as it is contemporary. She talks of the color of the earth, the quality of the air, of waterways, and the search. The camera is a recorder, a tool, something that enables Zakai to work uninterrupted, in silence, through storms, in the open air, always with a sense of life’s ritual nature..."
* John Grand, Art Critic, writer, curator, Canada

2012 Solo Show at the Artists' House in Tel-Aviv. The exhibition includes photographs, installation and video-art, daylighting active-artistic-social processes which Shai Zakai has initiated in damaged areas,and about urgent ecological issues her new book - Forest Tunes- The Library, was also launched in the exhibition

Shai Zakai's Time Slices

"…A new  image, each one of them an original, a unique specimen, that only remotely resembles a photograph…The series of photographs on metal plates reflect to a great extent decay, both of image and material, as a function of the passage of time…"
Nissan N. Pereze, Curator of Photography The Israel Museum, from the opening essay in the catalog, Jerusalem 1995  

Photographed Rituals, is an exhibition exhibited at the International Photography Festival, in Tel Aviv, 2012. Shai Zakai curated, as well as exhibited. Zakai has invited two artists to exhibit at the show, whose artworks are process based art and the environment is always their motivator for their visual reports - Fern Shaffer and Chris Jordan, USA.Shai Zakai has shown the Forest photographic walks series, and a PPS from the series- 'Dancing Stops Cuttings'.

The Stream's Dress is a triptych, color photograph, depicting a process of observation at a restored stream. A virgin white nightgown inserted into the water, and photographed at 8.00 am, 14.00, and 8.00 pm.

The photograph testifies about the situation of the stream without words.

The piece was exhibited at the exhibition "Bridges", at the site, as part of the celebrations of the stream. The photograph showed that perhaps it is too early for celebrations.

A photographic walk through one territory in the forest, neart the studio, along 17 years. "Small Happenings"  that we can pass by and never see. The act of photographing the forest, is also an act of preservation of the forest. Inserting an act of photographing into the daily activity, like brushing one's teeth, necessitates the existance of the forest. as long as it will be photographed, it will be there. 

50X50 cm each, limited edition of 5 copies each.

Single works that are not necessarely part of a series. They were exhibitied along the years in different exhibitions and contexts.

On A Regular Day- is a series of color photographs, presented as diptychs, combining two different photographs with no visible connection between them. Bonding them together, create a new meaning that does not appear if separated i.e, 1+1=3 .
Size 45X90 cm.

A series of six photographs, taken one photograph a year, following the deterioration and decomposition of a dinamic installation, which connects between an observation on a consumption society's behaviour and a personal observation on objects as representatives of memory and segregation processes.

A photograph from a series of photographs comosed while agresive cuttings occured near the artist studio. The title means lightly cutting for the benefit of the trees themselves, and was taken from the foresters' vocabulary, but in fact deforestation was the epitom in reality.

The work was exhibited in "Secrete Art" exhibition , at Leumi Bank, Tel Aviv. Curators- Doron & Esty Polak. Dancer - Sigal Kaplan.

Installation made of organic materials taken from places where man damaged nature. The public was invited to enter the wardrobe, but instead of comtemporary high fashion, there were only armors. The tree armor, was composed of tree barks that were cut in vain, and were connected together to one tree trunk, this time, along with some kitchen knifes, to protect the tree at the next cutting. "Beyong The Pleasure Principle", Curated and exhibited by Shai Zakai, at the Artists' Workshop Gallery, Jerusalem, 1999. It was also the 1st group exhibition of artists from 'The Israeli Forum for Ecological Art', NGO founded by Shai Zakai on the same year. Catalog published in Hebrew.
Armors were exhibitied also at the Engel Gallery, Um El Phahem Gallery, Beeri Gallery, Hashfella museum, and at the Photography & Eco-Art Centre.

Photographs and photograpms combined, printed in 1998. 
The braid represent fundamental shapes in nature, and also a rear consciousness, of onself.
The origin of the series is a photo of a ninty years old womans' braid, hung at the Opera House in Tel-Aviv. 
The photo moves through a reduction process or a fullfilment, depending from which side it is being watched.
The basic forms are emphasized by the photograms, the braid, like in nature, represents basic order and disorder.
The pins collects the hair back into order, and to its place. In a reduction process, the braid disappears and the pins serve as a reminder. Printed on canvas. unique copy. 64X64 cm each.

A selection of joint installation and video-art, with artist Dov Or-Ner; 'Inserting one ray of sun into the ground'- performance and installation in the fields of Beery. Exhibitions were installed at the Beery Gallery, Baram museum, Hakkibutz Gallery, and at the Eco-art Centre, 1998-2004.  in the photo- Braided earth coated with 22 karate gold leaves, 1998.