My recent work reflects a struggle to locate personal identity within a global political climate of war and conflict.  The multi-faceted and non-hierarchical nature of one’s identity—I am at once an American, a woman, a mother, and Jewish among other signifiers—complicates the task of understanding political strife, even when one bears witness from a remove.  In my work I consider both my first-hand experience of the constant military presence in Israel during frequent trips to visit extended family and while traveling in Northern Israel during the onset of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict of 2006.  I also grapple with the daily visual experience of media images from the battles in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan.  As memory and visual data, these images are seemingly transferable from one war to the next.  The larger core arguments at stake in these conflicts are absent from the images of death and destruction, leaving only a common humanity that renders the struggle oddly senseless.  The image, for example, of a woman wailing in grief near the bombed rubble of her home, is not representative of democracy—and yet, we are expected to accept that this “collateral damage” is the price of a never-ending process to achieve freedom. I only see another human being, feel her grief and struggle to find a way to object to these endless battles. 
 
At the core of my investigations, which largely consist of drawings, manipulated photography and experiments in video, I am attempting to reconcile my beliefs and values with images of destruction from centuries-old conflicts that exist in the name of protecting identity itself.   But how does one reconcile cultural attachments to the same belief systems—the politics of gender, ethnicity, and religion—that are the proponents of objectionable wars?  To what extent can a single individual affect change within a history that extends long beyond my existence?  Further, my work examines how one’s sense of identity could have significantly different ramifications but for the randomness of geography. Israel, regardless its conflicts, is a second home to me and my sense of belonging to its culture is a strong undercurrent in my work. Because of this connection, I recognize myself in the images of war and wonder at the parallel existence I might have experienced elsewhere.