Solo exhibition, The Red House, Tel Aviv, 2017
Text by Hagit Peleg-Rotem, exhibition curator.
In Mimosa Pudica Ronit Baranga creates a site-specific installation, binding the entire gallery space in a mysterious scene. Craving hands emerge from the walls into the space, like a gaping body longing to touch and feel the motion, to capture the life within it. The hands weave delicate threads around the room, tied between them as in an infinite cat’s cradle. But the frozen motion is tense — if one hand lets go the entire web will collapse.
A figure of a girl on the verge of femininity is at the heart of the installation. Her eyes shut as if looking inwards, her expression anxious, anticipating. Her many fingers fold and stretch out, prepared to capture the world or to shy away from it. Her torso rises from the room’s floor: does it nourish on her roots, or does the room hold her down? Many hands reach out to touch her, caught short on their way, while she is trapped in the thicket — or perhaps she is the one pulling the strings.
Her long red hair corresponds with figures of nymphs and goddesses from Titian and Botticelli to Munch, Schiele and Klimt. Baranga puts her on display, but she curls in shyly, withdrawn. The girl is a live-still-life hybrid, a garden shut, erotically charged with emotions and over-sensitivity, with potential of life and death.
On top of the cupboard, a Mimosa Pudica — sensitive as a baby, sprouting like a young girl. Shivering and flinching to a sudden touch and slowly opening again, expanding her curious leaves, closing her eyes and giving in to the caressing sunlight. The sensual and responsive plant is the metaphor at the heart of the exhibition.
