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Salonnièr #3
Sima Levin During her residency at Salon Berlin, Sima Levin will continue to develop her engagement with Second Skin (working title), a new body of work that has evolved over the past two years against a backdrop of prolonged personal and social instability. Her evolving technique of working with ink on large-scale paper requires a deliberate release from the desire for control. The works emerge intuitively, “from the gut,” in both a physical and emotional sense, tracing the shifting energies of the female body over time. Through fluid, unrestrained ink stains, Levin approaches the figure of the woman as a cosmic entity, one that simultaneously embodies creation, destruction, and introspection. She seeks to access a latent, primordial force - an echo of Kundalini energy, which is rooted in ancient Indian spiritual traditions and central to Tantric philosophy and Vedic thought. In her work, the female body unfolds as a hybrid metaphysical terrain, where earth, sky, animal, and abyss converge. It is both a source of life and a site of tension between opposing forces: compassion and rage, creation and dissolution. Movement, water, and the body coalesce within the drawings as carriers of memory and transformation, interweaving personal and intergenerational histories of migration and settlement. Ink stains evoke both dramatic, almost apocalyptic scenes as well as intimate moments of stillness, reflection, and reconciliation. The creative process unfolds in the liminal space between control and surrender, allowing images to gradually surface as expressions of vulnerability, resilience, and the multifaceted nature of the female experience. |
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Sima Levin (b. 1957, Chișinău, Moldova) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans a wide range of media, including large-scale charcoal drawings, oil painting, traditional printmaking techniques (lithography, etching, and woodcut), porcelain sculpture, and site-specific installations. Her work explores a persistent tension between belonging and instability, structure and dissolution. Echoes of her biographical transition from Soviet Moldova to the Israeli context are present within her works and manifestations of nature emerge as a confluence of the immediate environment in which she lives and layered memories shaped by time and migration.
Levin began her artistic training at the Shchusev School of Art and the Ilya Repin School of Art in Chișinău. After immigrating to Israel in 1974, she continued her studies at The NB Haifa School of Design (1979), further enriching her practice through advanced training with leading artists. Alongside her extensive artistic activity, Levin taught art and design for over three decades, while also running an independent graphic design studio and working as a freelance illustrator for publishing houses and the press.
Levin began her artistic training at the Shchusev School of Art and the Ilya Repin School of Art in Chișinău. After immigrating to Israel in 1974, she continued her studies at The NB Haifa School of Design (1979), further enriching her practice through advanced training with leading artists. Alongside her extensive artistic activity, Levin taught art and design for over three decades, while also running an independent graphic design studio and working as a freelance illustrator for publishing houses and the press.