Avivit Ballas-Baranes Born in 1960 in Tel Aviv. she lives and creates in Regavim . Ballas-Baranes is a multi-disciplinary international artist. A graduate of the Beit Berl Art School in 1984, she holds a second degree in the semiotics of art from the University of Paris 8 in 1998. She is a senior lecturer in art at the Academic College in Kiryat Ono. Between 1985 and 2005, she lived and worked in Paris. She has exhibited in approximately 30 solo shows, including at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Rishon LeZion Art Museum, as well as in over 70 group exhibitions in museums and galleries in Israel and around the world. She has received numerous awards in Israel and France. Her works are found in many public and private collections in Europe, Australia, the United States, Canada, and Israel. Her work process encompasses the manipulation of materials, photographs, and texts produced in various techniques. Her works deal with questions of place-language, identity versus foreignness, memory, and cultural heritage. Materials taken from the environment, such as newspapers, coffee, salt, sand, soil, and construction and renovation materials like plaster, gypsum, and sawdust, are integrated into her works. The few colors used in her work include acrylic, oil, ink, graphite, charcoal, and pastel. Everyday and building materials are rooted in real life, taken from real life, and transformed into artistic materials. The paintings are created from multiple layers of color, material, drawing, collage, and texts. This is how the “body” of the painting is formed, a physical-material presence, where the material carries within it the spirit of its memory.