“Remember how you told me she’s stubborn and won’t listen when it comes to her health? Well, in art she’s exactly the same.”
The message from the work was so clear, sharp, and chilling. I could only imagine to what level she would have taken it if I had photographed the actual burial of her life mask in Solomon River in the desert – an event that looked as if it had taken place centuries ago… “What goes through your head when you create these works?” I asked after her mother left.
“I can’t define it exactly, but I know I want to confront these subjects – illness, death. It’s a direct continuation of my disabled project. I don’t want to deny my condition or the fact that I’m on my way to … I don’t even know where.” she answered honestly.
“What kind of responses do you get at the College of Art and Design?” I asked, curious about the artistic side.
“Usually professional and to the point. After all, they don’t know anything about me.” When I asked what she planned to do with the photos, she said she wanted to display them in a series,side by side, showing physical – and perhaps psychological – deterioration, and that for this she needed my help.
“I brought hospital papers, like you asked,” I told her the next day when I came home. Lily came out of her room. Her hair was cropped short. The cut highlighted her green eyes all the more. I was speechless. She looked stunning.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I went with my mother. She drove me to Bnei Brak.”
“And what did you do with the hair?”
“They’ll make a wig for me. In the meantime, I bought this one.” She pointed to a plastic stand holding a wig that matched her natural color but not the texture. She put it on.
“Take it off – the short cut really suits you. Much better than long hair,” I told her.
“If you like the short cut so much, then you take it off for me.”
I removed the wig and found another Lily before me, radiant, and wonderful. If this was the baldness that awaited her, then it was beautiful. But inside I knew it was another kind of baldness – the baldness of radiation, of chemotherapy, treatment she was supposed to undergo.
“If the hair falls out, better it’s short now so the difference won’t be so great,” she chuckled.
“Yours won’t fall out – you’re made of something else. Even the steroids didn’t affect you like others. You had no side effects.”
“But this new drug – Imuran, I think – causes hair loss.”
“Not you, I’m telling you, not you. You look amazing with it short. At least this glass is half full.”
“You’re just flattering me – you don’t want to hurt me.”
“You’re gorgeous, amazing – what do you want me to say?”
“That you love me.”
“I love you, I love you, I love you. Should I go on? Stop?”
“Enough, I believe you.” She smiled a captivating smile, her chin tilting unevenly the way only she could smile. In herstudio, I saw a long wooden board, about two meters by forty centimeters.
“What are you doing with this?”
“Look.” She pointed to the tiles beyond it. On them lay nine photos of her face before the haircut, each altered with different colors. It was a series that began with a normal face and ended with one showing madness.
“Are you checking yourself in?” I teased.
“You’ll write psychiatric diagnoses on the papers you brought – from normal to psychotic.”
“And what will you do with it?”
“Under each photo, there will be a diagnosis. This is the normal one,” she pointed to the clean photo on the left, “and this is the psychotic,” she pointed to the frightening one on the right.
“And these,” she pointed to the others, “are the intermediate stages.”
I couldn’t refuse. I did everything she asked, while she stood over me, watching closely.
