Steel / Stone

Steel / Stone Series – Selected works

The activity of collecting and gathering earth fragments started in my childhood while living in Mount Carmel, Israel. At a certain point, I realized that my studio had become akin to the “cave” of my childhood and the collection of earth fragments had become my inventory and language.

Each fragment is a signifier - an object waiting to be captured. Out of these objects emerges meaning. At times, I endow them with symbolic or metamorphic meaning, at other times they become transformed - earth becomes pigment, stones and branches become tools and seeds and pods become vessels and containers.

"[...] in her series steel/stone (Safdie) has given meaning to these wedges of slate, these slivers of granite, obsidian and basalt, by emphasizing their acuity and their destiny as sharpeners, chisel, knives ,trowels, gravers and scalpels."

- Zanatovska Murray, Irena,, “Sylvia Safdie The Inventory of Invention”, pg. 24