Elizabeth MacKenzie

This ongoing series (now 1,000+ drawings) became a place for me to process the horrors that have unfolded during the genocide currently taking place in Gaza, since October 2023. It is both a refuge from and engagement with the feelings of horror this catastrophe evokes.

The drawings are small and produced on a range of surfaces. The bubble images developed as a way to consider cellular structure—those that produce life as well as those that destroy.

The text fragments emerge from the news updates, articles and essays that document israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestine.

I write using my barely-remembered grade-school cursive, so the script is awkward and laboured. The use of a hard-leaded pencil emphasizes this effect, since it requires more effort and may tear or score the paper as I write.

The title “Cleave” is a contronym—a word with two contradictory meanings. In this case, cleave means both to split and separate as well as to closely attach.

The bubble images I combine with the text in the Cleave drawings emerged in response to my interest in representing cellular structures. I’m susceptible to forms that evoke both microscopic and macroscopic perspectives within my image-making repertoire. Family conversations about fertility and pregnancy led me to reflect on the process of cellular development—from egg to zygote to embryo and beyond.

The limitations of what I was able to accomplish with my usual drawing techniques led me to a consideration of bubbles and a memory of the “bubble art” I made with my children when they were very young. I began to experiment with various pigments, a range of bubble solutions, ready-made and bespoke bubble blowing tools, as well as different paper surfaces best suited to accept and support the bubble forms.

I produced a number of images, that were diverting, but on their own the images failed to galvanize my imagination. My interest in continuing this investigation stalled.

Following the start of israel’s virulent attacks on Gaza, these images became a peculiar repository for me to process the horrors that continue to unfold every day.

The hundreds of drawings I’ve produced over the past two years have done nothing to alleviate the harm. They allow allow me to process (and amplify) these historic events as they are taking place.

This investigation explores the face of poet, writer and scholar, Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, whom I invited to be involved in the process of making.

Because Julie (as she’s known to her friends) lives in another city, our conversations took place via email, text and a couple of Zoom calls. She supplied me with a series of selfies, that I used as references for the drawings. Early on in our conversations, I warned her that the drawings would, most likely, not be flattering, In spite of this she was still keen to participate. 

In one of our text conversations Julie described her response to the drawings (that I’d posted to my Instagram account):

JOB: Sometimes I look at them as if I’m seeing myself without an awareness of me seeing myself. I don’t know if you know what I mean. Like catching yourself in a video that you were not aware was being taken…

EM: Yes, I understand. That’s how I feel when I see my drawings of my own face. Me, not me.

JOB: Exactly. Me, not me. But also me as I don’t know but can somehow recognize? Me as my own kin?

The possibility that I am representing Juliane’s kin, rather than she, herself, was wonderfully liberating.

Even though I draw faces often, I struggle with the presumption of portraits—that we imagine they represent the essential, ineffable character of their subject. My drawings of a specific person’s face represent a desire to know and understand that person, as well as an acknowledgement of the impossibility of doing so.