Edlen Lavan is an artist based in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Master in Contemporary Art from the Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London.
Mediums:
participatory projects, installation, collages, performance, digital photography.
Exhibitions & events:
June 2025 – "The Urban Rainbow", exhibition, Rixos, Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt
From May 2025 – ongoing practice and performances – "The Endless lullaby", social art project, Ulpan Gordon, Tel Aviv, Israel
May 2024 – "Not in a Desert", group exhibition, Be’er Sheva, Israel
Residencies:
May 2025 – Marina Abramović Institute, Athens, Greece
Master in Contemporary Art from the Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London.
Mediums:
participatory projects, installation, collages, performance, digital photography.
Exhibitions & events:
June 2025 – "The Urban Rainbow", exhibition, Rixos, Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt
From May 2025 – ongoing practice and performances – "The Endless lullaby", social art project, Ulpan Gordon, Tel Aviv, Israel
May 2024 – "Not in a Desert", group exhibition, Be’er Sheva, Israel
Residencies:
May 2025 – Marina Abramović Institute, Athens, Greece
EDLEN LAVAN
The Network series
installation series
The Network Series explores visible and invisible connections, rooted in my experience of relocating to Israel.
The Urban Rainbow
photo series
Urban Rainbow is an ongoing series of abstract photographs and videos that reveal hidden beauty in everyday urban textures.
Abaita
installation, participatory community project
Abaita explores the trauma of forced relocation, immigrant longing, and the shifting roles of a woman as mother, wife, and professional.
Stars and Stones
installation, participatory project
Stars and Stones is a multidisciplinary project that transforms personal and collective trauma into spaces of beauty, remembrance, and shared presence.
The Beauty Darknet
installation, participatory project
The Beauty Darknet explores the labor, pain, and endurance behind ideals of femininity.
Collage, sculpture, installation
The Endless Lullaby
participatory community project
The project began with a personal lullaby written for my son during times of moving and searching for a sense of home.
Creative Labour
performance
The project explores the invisible labor of creating ideas – often unfolding in overlooked moments and routines.
I am a woman, a mother, a wife, an artist, an entrepreneur, a believer.
The two main themes I address in my work are spirituality in its various forms, and diverse aspects of the feminine essence.
Women as a gender exist under numerous restrictions, taboos, and stigmas. Studying the multiple dissonances of the female position in the modern world, I turn to archaic and relevant symbols, myths, and true stories to explore the taboo and fetishization of female sexuality, and the sacredness of wife and mother images. Motherhood, not as a biological ability, but as a cultural function fascinates my mind. How does it simultaneously liberate and enslave? How does it affect the status of sexuality? What does it feel like to be an ‘ideal woman’ these days and is it possible to be successful in other public spheres at the same time? How do we turn sexual energy into the salvation of the soul?
The spiritual component is the second zone of my artistic practice, where I try to find a fine line between religion and God, rational and unconscious, higher powers and body endurance, reality and dreams. How can we tune the communication of souls outside the verbal context?
To explore those complicated issues, I choose several techniques: photography, painting, collage, video-art, sculptural objects, and site-specific installations, including participatory practices in some works. I want a variety of my media to highlight the complex nature of spirituality and feminine existence in the world I live in and create around me.
The two main themes I address in my work are spirituality in its various forms, and diverse aspects of the feminine essence.
Women as a gender exist under numerous restrictions, taboos, and stigmas. Studying the multiple dissonances of the female position in the modern world, I turn to archaic and relevant symbols, myths, and true stories to explore the taboo and fetishization of female sexuality, and the sacredness of wife and mother images. Motherhood, not as a biological ability, but as a cultural function fascinates my mind. How does it simultaneously liberate and enslave? How does it affect the status of sexuality? What does it feel like to be an ‘ideal woman’ these days and is it possible to be successful in other public spheres at the same time? How do we turn sexual energy into the salvation of the soul?
The spiritual component is the second zone of my artistic practice, where I try to find a fine line between religion and God, rational and unconscious, higher powers and body endurance, reality and dreams. How can we tune the communication of souls outside the verbal context?
To explore those complicated issues, I choose several techniques: photography, painting, collage, video-art, sculptural objects, and site-specific installations, including participatory practices in some works. I want a variety of my media to highlight the complex nature of spirituality and feminine existence in the world I live in and create around me.
Artist Statement