About

It began with the desire to live a life of expansion, a need to understand the human mind, and the reluctance to obey.

There wasn’t a grand design as to how my life would be organized. Other then the need to find my place in the world, discover how I fit and how things fit together, mostly, I would say, Curiosity took me by the hand. Mine was certainly a meandering path. Overtime I came to see that in a strange way, now not at all surprising, the dots connected to an image, to a story, reflecting back to me who I have become. It is not a finished story, except perhaps when time will stop for me.

Mostly I wandered around. I worked in many jobs which didn't disappoint in learning how this world works. I picked for money oranges and avocados, strawberries and cherries, apples and gerbera flowers. I crawled behind a tractor in dry earth to pick potatoes. I picked wild raspberries in Norway. I planted an orchard of Pears. I think of that period as basic life training. I tasted the dust and my salty sweat,  and felt the early morning freeze, fingers prickly and red, picking and cutting an orange in the precise manner so as not to harm the fruit or the tree, as fast and as elegantly possible. Overtime I was very pleased with my swing on the ladder, the twist to the basket, the quick rotation back to the tree. Time was tangible. I planted an orchard of pears. My hands and back hurt, and I was pleased to see things grow and distressed when frost threatened young trees.

I was a soldier for two years, disciplined, and I would like to believe, fair to my soldiers. At times it troubled me, but mostly I was proud of my service, grateful for having to think what it meant to bear arms. I worked the night shift as a phone operator in a posh hotel in Tel Aviv, and red eyed, a little after dawn, I would carry myself to a dingy coffee shop for turkish coffee, a smoke, and melancholic contemplation.  My body hurt and I felt drunk from lack of sleep. Perverts would call the phone line for relief throughout the night. The sounds I can still hear.  I would sleep for a few hours, get on my bike, and from Neve Tzedek I would transplant myself to Tel Aviv University to the philosophy and comparative literature departments. The contrast was palpable. I was a waitress and a bar woman for a long time, I made a lot of money and learned to measure appetites and mood, seduction and aggression. The kitchen, anyone can tell you, has too many knives.

I worked for a political party for a short while, I was a journalist, a trouble maker, a person difficult to manage.  I lived in a few countries, in many landscapes, and some great  cities. I did a stint in kibbutz, a village in Norway, and I built a home on a river. 

This is how the world is: you try to fit in a box and it is too small, you have to get out and you have to look around.  Sometimes even in your own garden, watching the ants walking back and forth on a mission is a good way to check things out. It’s good to look, to see, to check, to imagine, to be in. Mostly be Curious. Make that world Inside-Out. A dialogue of what is. That’s all I learned really.

The images are both external and internal landscapes, a blend influencing each other and inform all that I do in my work and in my love.

Zoi Dorit Eliou