Artist Inbar Hasson on Identity, Desensitization & Accountability

While beach towels hung to dry like flags announcing the summer season on the balconies of Andalucia at the beginning of May, I experienced the kind of piercing cold I’d almost forgotten in Smoljanac, Croatia. This was on one of our longer stops on a six-week road trip through Europe. A place where I felt I was finally arriving, where I was able to catch my breath for a beat. The house in which we were staying was cradled by a plethora of greens – juicy juniper leaves hanging from moss-covered trees tapping against the large window panes. Vast meadows of emerald shoots, with pear green highlights framed by pine forest borders, its contours marked by families of Norway spruce, irregular like the history of this unique locality. A perpetual pitter-patter of rain soaked the earth, bathing houses that had withstood the test of time and social unrest in a light as solemn as its inhabitants.

The husband and I took full advantage of the first true dining-table-cum-desk we had on this trip – oval shaped and initially draped with a clean white lace cloth that was immediately stained red with the daughter’s changurro. Being able to spread out, on the same table but within our respective work islands without bumping elbows, felt freeing after weeks of claustrophobic laptop stations and hunch-backed improvisations. On our second night, the outdoor drizzle trickled into my indoor experience, and the resulting exhale breathed new life into my work. And as I sat there, present and appreciative of these unseasonal offerings, I was gifted another – disturbingly elegant and presented on an unlikely canvas, like a Halloween pie on a morbid chart of unignorable truths typically left undigested. Artist Inbar Hasson’s latest project, b_side plate.

With handmade ceramic bowls, plates and cake stands – in other words, a darkly quirky set of “artivism dinnerware” – Hasson puts the things other people typically like to brush under the carpet right there on the table. As a confrontational centerpiece. Like the soft-pink bordered plate serving up this fact: “24% of global deaths are linked to environmental issues. [WHO].” Yeah. Sit on that one, I thought upon learning that the place we had booked in Italy cancelled our stay because all the roads leading there had been flooded. After we had already thrown a little strop about it. This flood, which we barely escaped, ended up costing thirteen people their lives and billions in damage. This knowledge and the privilege-check it inspired was certainly not just a b_side dish; it was a main course served as a blatant reminder of the many other (in)actions and attitudes we need to be held accountable for.

When I connected with Inbar over a Zoom call some weeks later, our conversation quickly fell into a natural flow. Her presence is calming. She’s charismatic, with a quiet confidence and a loud painter’s palette that translates all she has to say at a volume that is inescapable, at a scale that cannot be overlooked. “It was never my dream to become an artist, it’s not like it’s all I ever wanted to do. I don’t have this romantic backstory.” It was entirely circumstantial, with the move to The Netherlands from her native Israel prompting her to explore a different direction in life. “I wanted to learn how to paint well and to have a good toolbox. Whatever I do, I like to take things seriously, so I didn’t see myself just going to night school. I looked for the most technical school and enrolled at the Wackers Academy of Art in Amsterdam, in a full, very traditional program and I loved it. Once I started art school, I felt happy here in the Netherlands – it no longer felt dark or cold. You know how it is, when you’re in a good mental space, you don’t mind the weather, it’s fine, even kind of dreamy. But when you’re a bit down, it’s hard when you don’t have the sun to lift you up. Holland is a country for strong people, that’s what I think,” she laughs, “people with a strong mentality.”

Inbar grew up in a super warm family and led what she describes as the quintessential, poster-like Israeli life during those two decades when things were relatively quiet. She followed the typical trajectory: upon finishing school she joined the military and started a career in the air force, where she ended up meeting her husband, who was part of the same helicopter squadron. “In Israel this is how you meet – at the military,” she jokes. The promise of peace inspired her to take up Middle Eastern studies, and she recalls Hussein of Jordon coming to visit as the happiest day of her life. But when everything collapsed again, she refocused her career on interior architecture. When the opportunity presented itself to move to Chicago for her husband’s studies, it was the first time they really understood how life in Israel had shaped them. Arriving in this foreign territory with just their suitcases, they observed kids playing volleyball at the beach and thought, oh, ok – so that’s what you should be doing when you’re eighteen.

“We understood then that we’re a bit fucked up; I really think that’s the case. Israel is a country full of people who are all experiencing PTSD. I had my son in Chicago but, back then, I still felt like I couldn’t leave the sinking ship that was Israel just because it’s nicer to live in America. I felt like I had to go back because we were very close to our military community and we lost a lot of friends. It felt like betrayal.” Upon returning to Israel, Inbar finished her interior architecture studies, and opened her own office with a partner. “I loved it – it was very different from being an artist, totally the opposite. If you respect your client you have to listen carefully to what they need, and not go with what you think looks good. I really enjoyed that. But I didn’t like the political direction Israel was taking; we couldn’t live in peace anymore. We were offered the possibility to move to The Netherlands and, at this point, I felt ready. We moved there with two kids and it was a process. I thought it was going to be hard for them but it was actually hard for me – I wasn’t expecting that.”

Having spent most of their childhood in the Netherlands, her children feel, perhaps, more connected to Dutch culture than any other. Inbar doesn’t feel she belongs neither here nor there. “When you are moving from one identity to the other, you’re no longer able to take it as it is, you become more critical. Either you settle on becoming a stupid person and seeing everything as perfect, or you become a bit wiser and open your eyes to things you can’t avoid criticizing. The idealistic idea of belonging is damaged when you have more than one perspective,” she explains. “I guess that the main identity we have, the four of us as a family, is that we belong to each other. We have created a micro-culture; it’s like a very stable table with four legs, and you can put either one of us next to the other and it works well in all combinations.” She feels at home in this micro-culture and in her role as a mother – it is the project of her life, the one she never questioned; the one no other venture will ever be able to compete with.

“Being a mother is what I do best. Is it always fun? No. Was it, at times, very, very boring? Yes. But this is what I felt I had to do, and this is why I can also say, I didn’t have room for another child,” she says matter-of-factly. This honest and charmingly blunt mannerism of hers is reflected in all of her art in some form or another, and I am certain that, if more of us spoke frankly about the ups and downs, the monotony of some days and the sudden intensity of others, in everyday, mothering life, we probably wouldn’t feel it necessary to mask our boredom and breaking points behind hashtags.  This is something her body of work #mylifeisamazing explores, from an angle that is as unforgiving as it is empathetic of the human condition. Inspired by the warped pursuit of happiness and success as a trophy rather than an actual state of mind, the series ridicules our lack of personal identity and depth by further exaggerating the embellished versions of ourselves we present online.

“I was reading Daniel Kahneman’s research on happiness, in which he talks about a separation from the satisfaction you feel in what you’re doing in life, and short-term happiness, as in momentary satisfaction – you buy something and you’re very happy, but within moments it dissipates. The more quick-fixes we get, the higher the dose needed the next time around; and I think this very much depicts our society,” she says. “I was late to the social media game, but it didn’t take me long to see that people I know and consider stable had this need to share more and more intimate moments – to create and curate moments that look good. At first, I’d look around thinking, really, you, as a strong woman, that’s what you need to do? Show that you still look good in a bikini? Come on… Knowing people in their real life and then seeing what they’re posting is so contradictive. I just found it interesting, the distance between what it looks like and what it’s really about. And because I follow a lot of inequality indexes, I couldn’t help but find a correlation, looking at the UN’s annual happiness survey, for example. This shallowness, I find it so painful and cynical. I enjoy channelling these thoughts and ideas into paintings; there’s a strength and an impact to an image that’s in your face – just one painting tells a short story.”

Inbar is aware of the selfish lifestyle she gets to relish in as an artist, which forms part of the attraction. She finds something she’s interested in and she dives in, excited to see what comes to the surface. While working on the multidisciplinary Background Check project, which highlights how a person’s upbringing directly determines how they are set up for life, she collected a lot of data and found herself increasingly impressed by the beauty of graph designs. “It was not like the default of Excel – there was someone actually sitting there thinking, if we put this colour and purple together – I found the thought very intriguing,” she chuckles. “I couldn’t avoid thinking about the UN council, sitting there in their suits, this extremely political organization in this very clean environment, saving the world. I imagined them sitting there and looking at these beautiful graphs full of harsh data. And then I woke up one night and I thought, ah, I have to do something on a plate, you know all these pie charts. I envisioned all these plates and charts and food. I have a lot of very stupid ideas at night, and in the morning, I realize they’re nonsense. But this idea kept me busy, so I started with simple tests in my studio using a marker and one simple graph with information about the divide in wealth in Europe.”

The results of the first test phase weren’t quite what Inbar had envisioned, but upon teaming with her former babysitter-turned-designer and art director, Fanny Maille, who advised her to add touches of gold for an eye-catching contrast, she found her groove and started rolling with it. And, as is true for everything she does, Inbar decided to get serious about ceramics, too. “I figured, if I’m going to be in the business of ceramics, I should know something about it, so I enrolled in a course. I didn’t see myself spending my days adding all the decals, so the best idea was to start my own line of production. I bought a small kiln and started.” Her main motivation behind the b_side project was finding a way to make statistics accessible – if not digestible – to viewers. “It's not that we don’t see this information, we are flooded with information, and the more we hear, the number we become. Numbers have no effect on us – what is 70%, really? It’s a bit like pornography, it’s a matter of desensitization. They’re not your people, they’re not your colour, you’re not there. So, I think you have to convey the information through an unconventional platform, and that might be the strength of the plate.”

When Inbar exhibited her range of artivism dinnerware in Rotterdam, the first thing people saw was this vibrant, colourful table. Then they noticed the real, edible cake proudly placed on these pieces and leaned in, in some cases to touch it. Upon inspecting the plates closer, they read the information and you could hear a sharp intake of breath as they began to absorb it.  “It has a very immediate impact, and that’s what I’m looking for. I do think we need to bring these topics to the table; we waste too much time talking about our kids’ teacher and everything she is or isn’t, and about the lady that helps us to clean the house, oh she’s always late…it is a call to talk about what really matters and to do something about it. I believe people care, they’re just not being approached in a way that is making them feel anything,” she explains. “There’s an enormous gap between the privileged part of the world we belong to and developing countries, the poorness of which this part of the world is very much responsible for.  We need to step up as responsible adults, to help and be held accountable – and we definitely don’t do that.”

The main motif behind Inbar’s work is, indeed, to challenge viewers, to set them up for a sense of discomfort that isn’t always obvious at first, but always present – as is true for the many social and environmental crises at play all around the world. “I am disturbed and concerned by the general numbness in our society. In art, I seek to punch this drowsiness that we can’t afford,” she states on her website. This punch is packed into all of her works, if not through replanted collages and narratives, then through a poignant colour palette and a scale capable of becoming Narnian wardrobes into what Ilan Wizgan described as, “the twilight zone between reality and imagination.” It is exactly this balance between politics and playfulness, outrage and acceptance and, through it all, a pillar of calm, that makes Inbar’s work unique and important to our time and persisting ignorance. The table has been laid – it’s up to you now to take a seat and use your silver spoon to dig right in. You may consider taking an Almax before you get started – but the artist cannot guarantee it will soften the blow to your gut.