Text by prof. Haim Maor
Migrating from Romania to Israel „unearthed" the mother language of Nora Stanciu. As she used to speak elevated, rich and sensitive language, in 1986, the year of her immigration, she suddenly became an awkward and confused user of Hebrew language, all new for her, that she was only starting to learn.
Since 1992, when Nora Stanciu started painting in Israel, she found the way the universal visual language and the brush as direct means of expression in her hands gave her back the abilities to express her feelings, thaughts and passions.
The selfportraits and still life paintings by Nora Stanciu illustrate various elements of her identity as a woman. The paintings allow her to travel in time and space, to assume and abandon identities, to reveal and externalize meanings. In many paintings, her face appears behind or inside complex decorative motifs. Apparently, her face is painted partly hidden by a screen. In fact, this screen is not hiding or covering her face, but is filtering the reality behind: a transparent and seducing veil, an invitation to a rich inner world. The decorative elements arise from European ethnic visual elements. Flowers, birds, wavy lines, abstract motifs are recalling the embroideries and laces in her native country, Romania. They are a source of „mental images", from which the artists´ feelings, memories, dreams and desires would appear. The series of her selfportraits resembles the interpretation of the tarot cards: the personality and destiny lie on the table and the viewer needs to guess their secrets. In the still life paintings, the porcelain objects, the traditional dresses, the poetry books and the carpets that she brought from Romania are becoming memory supports, but they are only few remains of an old identity melting into the new Israeli identity, her new country. The texts in Romanian or the fragments of icons that she is quoting and inserting into her paintings represent the means to make an impressive link between the puzzle pieces composing the double identity of a person living within two cultures – she was „Jewish" in Romania and „Romanian" in Israel.
