This installation explores the tension between individual and collective identity—between the desire to belong and the equally powerful need to become oneself. It grows out of my experience of being born and raised in Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha, where childhood was lived collectively. My age group shared not only classrooms but also bedrooms, clothes, toys, and the rhythms of everyday life. This deep sense of community fostered connection, interdependence, and belonging, while also raising fundamental questions about identity. How do we discover our own voice within a collective? How do we remain ourselves while being shaped by the communities to which we belong?

The installation brings together acrylic self-portraits from different stages of my life with corresponding original video footage, creating a dialogue between painting and moving image, memory and lived experience, stillness and motion. Together, the paintings and video trace an identity that is never complete, but continually shaped by memory, time, and the communities that leave their mark on us.