Matter

Motherhood, in the broader sense of the relation that attends to a child’s earliest and most elemental needs (regardless of which parent provides it), is a recurring motif in Arkin’s work.
In Matter, motherhood is rendered as a painful experience for both mother and child. A kind of nest has been woven to cradle the child, yet the nest is cold, abrasive, rusted. A blanket is painstakingly made for the child’s comfort – yet the blanket is heavy, scratchy, and largely unusable, spilling far beyond the nest. Will does not meet capability; romantic dreams of perfect motherhood collide with reality and splinter. Probably all mothers have their Matter moments.
The work was first exhibited at the Uri & Rami Nehostan Museum, in a sealed, darkened room where viewers entered a state of spatial disorientation, giving rise to a faint bodily sense of anxiety and precarity.
In the Petah Tikva Museum of Art’s exhibition If I Was Body, Matter was set alongside a collection of ancient and tribal figurines depicting various scenes and aspects of motherhood. Together, they formed a universal, cross-cultural dialogue on one of the most natural, complex, and essential of human relationships.