What Remains Awake: Artist Sarah Svetlana's searching, luminous homecoming to Jaffa

Los Angeles-based artist Sarah Svetlana presents her first solo exhibition in Israel at Mika Contemporary Art Gallery in Jaffa. The show, titled 'What Remains Awake,' explores themes of exile, assimilation, and belonging through abstract paintings that incorporate family history, mourning, and the aftermath of October 7, 2023. The exhibition marks the artist's return to the studio after a period of depression. Born in 1985 to a Belarusian Jewish family, Svetlana left the Soviet Union as a child in 1989. Her family had a choice between Israel and the US while passing through Rome; they ultimately settled in America. The artist describes the journey as a full-circle moment: an opportunity to reach a place bound up with her Jewish heritage and to bring a new body of paintings to the country. The exhibition's title names the process of what remains after everything burns down: memory, ash, residue, and the part of the self that persists. The series unfolds in three movements: The Root, The Heart, and The Will. Curator Ellada Ilana Matatoc, who also left the former Soviet sphere as a small child, first encountered Svetlana's work on Instagram in 2019.