One Thousand and One Days

One Thousand and One Days spins the story of Scheherazade, who told tales of the Middle East, into a contemporary pictorial narrative, highlighting the fragile and unstable conditions in which we live and breathe. Alluding directly, and indirectly, to the challenges we face – climate change, pollution, dust storms, various medical emergencies, and hurricanes – Zigi Ben-Haim counters these perils with an array of images offering hope and healing.

The project was started in 2009 and completed in 2013. It contains unique cartoon-like drawings from life and nature that emphasize the precariousness of our existence. The combination of images is inspired by Ben-Haim's childhood, a recollection of the folk tale, "One Thousand and One Nights." Just as Scheherazade saved herself using the enchantment of words, Ben-Haim's reinterpretation proposes that images may have just as profound an effect. Both the folk tale and images are exaggerated and disproportionate to reality, creating a provocative metaphor of survival.

One Thousand and One Days consists of three parts; 1001 drawings on medical masks, four paintings with mixed media on aluminum (48” x 96”), and 98 paintings on board (10” x 8”). * The use of the colors black, white, and turquoise carry forward Ben-Haim's personal story. The images he creates are drawn from his own rich vocabulary, and yet embrace universal themes, celebrating the diversity of cultures amongst us. Each part raises questions of social, cultural, and economic progress, and calls attention to our survival in the face of disease, climate change, and global warming. The drawings on 1,001 basic white dust painter's masks serve as medical symbols, like talismans protecting us from the self-induced costs of progress. The paintings on aluminum represent urban-industrial life, while the paintings on wood symbolize simplicity.

* The installation of this project may be accompanied by the music of "Scheherazade" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.