Belu Simion Fainaru has a thing or two to say about art and the art world. And he is well worth listening to. The 65-year-old Romanian-born Haifa resident interdisciplinary artist has been around a bit. Over the past three and half decades, he has exhibited regularly at our major museums and galleries; and he is a frequent contributor to group shows, as well as solo displays, around the world.
His broadly sweeping oeuvre and national and global presence have now been officially recognized. Come Independence Day (May 1), he will attend a glittering ceremony in Jerusalem, where he will shake hands with, inter alia, Education Minister Yoav Kisch and President Isaac Herzog when he receives this year’s Israel Prize for his work in the expansive field of design and interdisciplinary art. It is the most sought-after accolade this country has to offer, and quite a feather in Fainaru’s hard-earned learned cap.
Casting an eye across the new laureate’s eclectic portfolio, one can understand why the three-person Israel Prize committee, headed by respected sculptor and painter Avner Bar Hama, went for him. The triad’s stated grounds for conferring the country’s highest honor on Fainaru noted that he possesses “a unique voice in the world of art and [is] an original creator within Israeli art.”
There’s no arguing with that. His works incorporate intriguing installations and displays that catch the eye, appeal to the intellect, and tug at the heartstrings all at once. To date, his overseas bio features exhibitions in his country of birth; in Belgium, where he spends much of his time; and in the US and elsewhere around the world, including at the prestigious Venice Biennale. On the domestic scene, the Israel Museum and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art have hosted some of his output.
Fainaru is clearly a deep thinker. And, while he is undoubtedly dedicated to the matter of leaping off creative cliff edges, and following his muse into previously uncharted territory, he makes sure he always has his feet on the ground.
When you think about it in the sober light of day, that makes perfect sense. There is, after all, an indispensable link between art and life, not only in terms of the forces, spirit, and influences that necessarily filter through from our quotidian existence and into the artist’s studio but also into the basic management and nuts and bolts of how artists go about their daytime job.
Fainaru is a great believer in an artist having as much independence as possible. Part of the rationale behind that mindset follows the belief that if an artist is to create something pure, something unsullied by financial or other considerations, he or she must be free of any strings and not be sidetracked by extraneous factors such as trying to toe some line or other or “selling out” because there is rent to be paid and mouths to feed.
THAT IS, of course, easier said than done. Also, in an ideal world, artists should surely be free to just get on with the business of following their muse through to the creative bottom line. That would, indeed, be a lovely state of affairs but, unfortunately, for the majority that simply isn’t tenable. There are practicalities to be wrestled with, and Fainaru is clearly not one to shirk from a challenge.
In a talk he gave at the Hazira multidisciplinary arts school in Jerusalem a while ago, Fainaru expounded on the theme of artists going their own way and managing their own finances, forging contacts with potential buyers and other sources of revenue, and taking charge of their own physical surroundings. He illustrated his rationale by citing a collective in his country of birth where, he said, increasing numbers of artists are shedding institutional shackles.
That, he posited, offers the invaluable benefit of freedom, not only to choose what to exhibit and when, but it also helps to circumnavigate official constraints which, to the artist’s mind, can be superfluous if not downright annoying.
He has firsthand experience to support that view. “I once put a car in a museum, which they agreed to. A couple of weeks later, they said I should take it out because it was too close to an emergency exit. That wasn’t true. The required distance from the exit was 1.5 meters, and it was two meters from it. They probably got some instruction from someone higher up. That’s the sort of thing an artist has to deal with.”
Fainaru’s credo
Fainaru generally sticks to his guns. It is a credo that has, by and large, served him well thus far.
Unusually, his career choices include opting to remain in Haifa, where he has lived since he made aliyah at the age of 13 together with his parents. “That keeps me away from all the noise and the posturing you get in Tel Aviv,” he chuckles. He is, however, keenly aware of the downside of steering clear of the limelight. “Here [in Tel Aviv], you can run into curators, artists, and museum directors on the street, and in cafés. That can help to remind them of your existence, which is a good thing.”
Street-level low profile notwithstanding, Fainaru continues to blaze his creative trail, dipping into ever deeper philosophical, as well as artistic, seams en route.
Fainaru’s artistic line of thought embraces an immersive reference to Judaism, Judaica, and even some Kabbalistic elements. And that from someone who spent his early formative years in a secular Jewish family in communist Romania with little in the way of Hebrew education. “I didn’t know the language,” says Fainaru. “When I was learning my bar mitzvah Torah portion, I had to learn it by heart. I had no idea what the words meant.”
That may have made the preparatory process more trying, but it endowed the youngster with a special appreciation of time-honored aesthetics.
That may have also meant the youngster could not see beyond the text, but it provided him with an enduring appreciation of the aesthetics on show. “I didn’t know Hebrew,” he elaborates. “I’d say I didn’t understand 97% to 98% of what was written there [in my bar mitzvah Torah portion]. But I had a very good teacher; I didn’t make any mistakes on the day. I think that because I didn’t know what the words meant, I related powerfully to the shape of the letters.”
The visual voids also aroused the teenager’s interest. “I noticed the black [letters] and the white [spaces] between them.” That sounds similar to a musical take on the tempo core to a composition whereby the intervals are just as important as the notes played by the instrumentalists. “I think about that in my approach to art,” Fainaru says.
That also informs his approach to the physical relationships between his exhibits and brings him back to sonic creativity. “I think about the physical intervals between my works. The space is the quiet between the sounds. John Cage paid a lot of attention to that.” Indeed, the 20th century American composer’s oeuvre includes a “score” called 4:33 which, in fact, is entirely silent although not devoid of tension or drama.
Hebrew, Judaism, everyday items in his work
Hebrew letters appear, in various shapes and sizes, across Fainaru’s body of work.
One prominent example is a large block of white stone with the letters “shin” and final “mem” cut out of opposing sides. That can spell sham (“there,” pronounced shahm) or shem (“name”), and references Fainaru’s keen interest in Jewish philosophy and mysticism. The work is now located on the campus of the University of Haifa, where the artist took an undergraduate degree and now teaches.
Like many of Fainaru’s creations, Sham/Shem is open to manifold interpretations. Sham, “there,” indicates an absence of presence here – Fainaru mentions “nothingness” several times during our conversation – and possibly feeds off the fact that the artist’s father survived three years in a Romanian forced labor camp during the Holocaust.
The latter and identity are leitmotifs of Fainaru’s output and draw the attention of folk in the global art world, particularly his religious allegiance. “I don’t know why, but many times when I have exhibited abroad I have been termed ‘a Jewish artist,’ not so much as an Israeli or a Romanian. That’s curious,” he says.
The interior of the large outdoor cube contains a boat, which is also a recurring feature. Once again, that suggests relocation and, possibly, hankering for one’s original base.
There may be another, more personal yet prosaic, subtext to the sea vessel’s inclusion. Fainaru’s father tried desperately to get to Palestine aboard the MV Struma, an ancient barely seaworthy ship, in late 1941. Luckily for Fainaru Sr., he couldn’t quite cover the cost of a ticket. Three months later, after a prolonged saga, the Struma was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine. Out of the nearly 800 Jewish Romanian refugees, there was only one survivor.
Fainaru says he expresses his Jewishness in his art, which includes fusing the material and the spiritual. “What you don’t see, the invisible, the metaphysical, is important: the significance of absence, of what is missing. In Judaism – only in Judaism – the material and the spiritual are joined. In Greek, Western, thought there is the body and the soul. There is duality; not so in Judaism,” he says.
Imbuing tangible objects with non-tactile properties, after all, lies at the core of all endeavor in the plastic arts sphere. Fainaru embraces that ethos and invites us to look anew at everyday items such as a chair, a cup, or an egg. That has paid handsome dividends over the years, and also brought him a berth in the Documenta exhibition, the contemporary art world’s most prestigious event, which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. Fainaru’s contribution was a diminutive affair that clearly punched way above its physical weight.
“It was the smallest exhibit there, and somehow everyone remembered it,” he says. “The work incorporated an egg with a cup; water; and a small wax ship with a mast and a triangular piece of paper for a sail.” Simple and very much to the point. “They called me the eggman,” Fainaru smiles.
Six years on from Documenta, the Israel Museum is about to unveil the work to the Israeli art-loving public. With the Israel Prize awards ceremony rapidly approaching, that’s pretty good timing, long post-Documenta hiatus regardless.
We return to the physical arrangement theme – objects, spaces, and context – while Fainaru adds another salient element to the discourse. It is something that features high up in his artistic take. “These are everyday things, like an egg, whereby the connection between them generates the meaning. These are things that people can easily identify.”
Not for Fainaru the holier-than-thou view of art and its place in our lives. He comfortably straddles the seeming divide between the mundane and the exalted. “If I exhibit a chair, for example, I want people to sit in it,” he says. Once again, he finds himself at odds with the powers that be. “But museum people wouldn’t allow that to happen,” he notes with a wry smile.
NATURALLY, HAVING “Israel Prize recipient” in his bio will make a difference to his public and professional profile, and make for excellent PR material. Fainaru is more than happy to embrace that, but he finds simple pleasure in the more elementary human reaction.
“No one in my apartment building in Naveh Sha’anan in Haifa knew I was an artist. I wanted to live in what I call a ‘civilian’ area, not a place where artists and intellectuals live, like Hadar. Then, when the word [about the Israel Prize] got out on social media and elsewhere, my neighbors suddenly discovered what I do for a living. A haredi neighbor brought me a bouquet of flowers with a letter of congratulations from all the neighbors. That meant a lot to me,” he recounts.
Hefty official pat on the back notwithstanding, Fainaru evidently intends to continue his creative quest with both feet firmly planted on the ground.