Dafna Kaffeman (born in Jerusalem) is an artist and a senior lecturer at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. She works with glass and various materials and techniques such as embroidery, print, drawing, to produce what the David Owsley Museum of Art describes as "beautiful, crafted surfaces and disturbing text about aggressors and victims". She lives and works in Israel.[1] Her work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions, and she has won, or been nominated for, a number of international prizes and awards.
Biography
Dafna Kaffeman graduated in 1999 from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, and in 2001 received a Master of Fine Arts from the Sandberg Institute, also in Amsterdam.[1] She had one-person shows, among others, at the Chrysler Museum of Art (2012), San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design (2015–16); the David Owsley Museum of Art at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, (2014–15); the American University Museum in Washington, D.C. (2011); and the lorch + seidel contemporary in Berlin, Germany (2006, 2010, 2013, 2017). She has participated in many group shows in Europe and the United States. In 2019 she won the Andree Matter Award for a woman artist by MADREEMA foundation. She won the Design Prize from the Israel culture ministry in 2016 and was awarded the Prize for the Advancement of the Arts (Israel) in 2011.
Kaffeman taught in various institutes such as the Tokyo Art University, Japan, Ball State University in Indiana, USA, Massachusetts Collage of Arts, Boston, USA, Kublenz University, Germany, Corning Museum of Glass, NY, USA. She had lectured at the Natural History Museum in TA, IL, The Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, NL, The Royal College of Arts, London, England.
Working methods
Described as "a poetess in glass,"[2] Kaffeman's work deals with social and political processes in Israel using several layers—texts that refer to events in the country and images of local flora and fauna—through which she addresses themes such as identity and immigration.
Using lamp working techniques, she has been building a botanical collection made of glass. Each work, whether of plants or insects, is informed by personal observation of the local environment through a cultural and an iconographic interpretation. In recent years, research processes, including drawing on paper, have become an integral part of her exhibitions. Embroidery plays a significant role in the work, serving as a platform for the text on which the work is based, and enabling collaboration with a varied range of populations.
The catalogue of the winners of the 2011 Israeli Minister of Culture prizes describes Kaffeman's work as: "Using a botanic lexicon that reaches into cultural practices of commemoration, sacrifice and mourning, the artist blends local values in meticulously crafted glass and embroidery work."[3]
Davira Taraqin writes of her work:
Since 2002, Kaffeman's increasingly transparent statements, first on politics and now on social issues, have taken two distinct directions. The plant and animal forms that comprise such series as 'Tactual Stimulation' and 'Wolves' are fabricated primarily from flame-worked glass. Kaffeman maintains that her subjects provided her a means to explore human behavior; but even early on her references to nature—a recurring metaphor used by many young Israeli artists—demonstrate her deep kinship with her homeland...Since 2006, Kaffeman has also made mini-environments that consist of embroidered handkerchiefs or felt to which she affixes flame-worked glass plants, sometimes insects...These carefully considered micro-environments present the disparity between beautiful crafted surfaces and disturbing text about aggressors and victims. (From the catalogue Without Camouflage. Dafna Kaffeman. Silvia Levenson, published by the David Owsley Museum of Art, Indiana, April 2014)[4]
Detail, Glass
Panoramic view of the exhibition Red Everlasting, Norway
Exhibitions
Solo exhibitions
anywhere, nowhere, elsewhere, Inga Gallery, Tel Aviv, IL, Sep-Oct,2024
the fire age, Traver Gallery, Seattle, USA, July,2024
Aerial Roots, Petach Tikva Museum of Art, Israel, Curator Irena Gordon, Aug – Dec 2021
if you thirst for a homeland, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, Curators Carolyn Swan Needell & Trudy Wiesenberger, Aug – Dec 2021, Roe Green Gallery at the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, April 2021
cotton plant, lorch+seidel contemporary, Berlin, Germany, September - November 2017
Without Camouflage, Museum of Craft and Design San Francisco, CA, USA, Curator Davira Taragin, September 2015 – March 2016[5]
David Owsley Museum of Art, IN, USA, Curator Davira Taragin, April–August 2014[6]
