Afikim Iconography

Aug 3, 2020

Afikim Iconography is a local graphic-illustration project that was born out of love for our childhood home, Kibbutz Afikim. 

Project

Illustration
Archival research

Team Members

Eitan glassman

Shlomit Rubanenko

Chapter 01

Longing for longing

In the course of our lives in the kibbutz yard, the buildings, appliances, and objects that were part of our everyday lives, used by us and as objects, were taken for granted. As we grew up and left Afikim, we began to notice the beauty of these objects, most of which were made by the laborers who founded the kibbutz at the beginning of the last century. 

Chapter 01

Longing for longing

In the course of our lives in the kibbutz yard, the buildings, appliances, and objects that were part of our everyday lives, used by us and as objects, were taken for granted. As we grew up and left Afikim, we began to notice the beauty of these objects, most of which were made by the laborers who founded the kibbutz at the beginning of the last century. 

Chapter 02

Eternal Sun

We began the project by surveying objects, corners, and events from the farmyard, debating what an icon is, and whether it is local mythology or a universal concept.

With each new object in the collection, the language became more sophisticated, and we discovered that all objects - from the dining room tray to a water tower - obey the same rules in their own way: the raw materials reappear, the production methods repeat, internal aesthetics are common to all objects and above all light The eternal sun of the valley and the dark shadow that falls across everything.

Chapter 03

New skin for an old icon

Through the project we tried to perpetuate the incidental and the useful and turn it into an icon, hence the name of the project, "Afikim Iconography".

Iconography is the study of symbols and images, which is a central part of the study of art history and is used as one of the methods for analyzing an artistic work and describing the history of art. Our goal was to offer a new interpretation of the kibbutz's visual dictionary.