RHEA CARMI: HUMANITY’S IMAGE
The human condition is not simply a favored subject of the modern artist, it is a preoccupation. Whether it is the turbulent passage of life, its inevitable (or at least poignant) tragedy, or the triumph that lies beyond – in the survival of the human spirit or the endurance of the species – artists in all disciplines, as spirited members of that species, speak invariably to the condition they share with their fellow homo sapiens. Across several decades and two continents, Rhea Carmi has spoken directly and consistently to the human condition. Her unabashed address to the passion and anguish her species knows can seem almost embarrassing in the rawness of its symbols and its textures. But Carmi mitigates this rough edge with an often-disarming elegance of means, a formal grace and coloristic charm that reformulate, but finally mirror, the beauty of the world around us. However nasty, brutish, and short our time on earth may be, Carmi reflects, joy and wonder can ease that fearsome ride . . . . . . . . . .

RHEA CARMI: CARNAVAL
Rhea Carmi remembers vividly her visit to Rio de Janeiro at Carnaval. It was, she says, a delirious, heightened moment of magic, color, sound and laughter. But she remembers other such moments, and has read about and witnessed others. Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Fasching in Basel, the Purims of Carmi’s childhood in Israel, and even the relatively tame – or at least tamed – Hallowe’ens that knock on her door every harvest season, all are manifestations of the human need to revel, transform, and put the everyday away in the closet. Non-western societies employ the mask routinely in religious ritual; in our civilization(s), the mask manifests, if anything, an irreligious gesture. But universally, when the mask goes on, the theater of life suddenly becomes the life of theater . . . . . . .