To make this piece, Yudkovik-Etzioni drew upon memories of her childhood in a kibbutz, a place of imagination and adventure where all manner of life flourished in the backyard. Her process is intuitive and improvisational, like jazz. That instinctual expression is reflected in the work’s playful visual cacophony—its terrain is endlessly ripe for exploration.

Yudkovik-Etzioni refers to the components of Backyard as “immigrant objects.” They represent the types of items that populate a life, things that are capable of being packed up and rearranged for a new stage of one’s existence. The work makes the familiar strange, both materially and semiotically, by turning that staple used for moving one’s precious items—cardboard—into precious items. Thus Backyard, beyond playing with scale and irregularity, creates a push/pull between the recognizable and the peculiar, echoing how one might perceive their belongings should they be plunked down in an unfamiliar place—and what those objects might turn into in the years to come.

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Critic’s Pick: New York City: Noga Yudkovik-Etzioni

By Micaela Houtkin

December 5th, 2024

Noga Yudkovik-Etzioni’s inaugural solo exhibition at FORMah, “Running Line,” brings together three large-scale floor installations and a selection of wall-mounted works. Although all sculptural and solid in appearance—and often mistaken for being made of wood or steel—each object is created almost entirely of paper.

The centerpiece of the show is Backyard, 2016, an installation constructed out of cardboard. The artist used steam to soften the material until it was pliable enough to mold into various shapes, such as a cylinder or a swim fin. These objects are then arranged into three undulating lines. The curved and organic forms populating its gentle peaks and valleys—some identifiable, others only approximating familiarity—suggest that the arrangement is a precarious one, as if any light disturbance could send it all scattering across the floor.