The white mask sat abandoned at her side as if its role had ended, and now she was the star. In some of the pictures, she asked me to include the mask, in others not. In the end, almost all of her body was covered.
“Lily, what are you doing?” I broke the silence.
“You see. I’m burying myself in the sand,” she answered naturally, as if this were the most ordinary thing.
“Why?” I pressed.
“Because I want to submit these body-art works to the College of Art and Design.”
“Did someone instruct you? Did anyone tell you to do this?”
“Not at all. This was my idea alone.”
“So why bury yourself?”
“I’m continuing the exercise with the death mask.”
“Lily, wait – you told me this was a life mask!” Fear overtook me. I didn’t know what her next step would be.
“Sorry … sorry, my love, you’re right. This is my life mask,” she tried to calm me.
“Lily, are you afraid?” I finally dared to ask what I had feared from the moment she cast the mask in the studio. There I had been just an apprentice, and remained so. But here in the desert, the open sky above, and her body and face painted white, I found the courage. A strange feeling came over me – maybe she knew something I didn’t? Maybe she felt her time was running out, and she was documenting her own death in a private burial ritual, photographed and immortalized by her lover. Or maybe it was just an exercise she had thought of, one impossible toignore? She knew the College of Art and Design didn’t know about her illness.
“Bring the shelf, place it as if it were the side of a coffin.”
“Lily,” I raised my voice. “I won’t do that!” I answered sharply.
“Come on, I’m already covered in sand, what do you want me to do – get out?” she laughed.
“Damn it, Lily, can’t anyone resist your will?”
When I brought the shelf, she directed me where to put it and from where to shoot. As the sun was setting, when all the equipment was already packed in the jeep, she asked for one more thing.
She lifted the life mask, looked at it, and asked me to photograph her burying it.
“I think you’ve gone mad,” I said.
“What does it matter to you? I’m asking.”
“Lily, I think I’ve done more than enough for you today.”
“I’m begging you. I’ll bury the mask, and you’ll photograph. Look what beautiful light there is now.”
“Lily, ask Dan. I’m not doing this.”
This time, she gave up. For the first time in her creative process. Maybe she felt I had reached my limit, and I felt she had crossed all boundaries. Maybe artists have no boundaries, but I did, and I couldn’t cross them. Not even for her. Perhaps art lost one of the boldest images in body art, but I gained peace of mind.
After she delivered the photos for development, she selected several, enlarged them, and submitted them to her teachers at the College of Art and Design for critique.
The exposure of the death-related ideas that had seeped into her was nearly complete. No one there imagined that before a year passed, her body-art works would move from imagination to a painful reality.
Chapter 53
Tel-Aviv
The studies at the College of Art and Design demanded much more of Lily than she had planned. She could manage the trip every two weeks, but she felt that when she was absent, she was missing important, irreplaceable parts. Talented as she was, she wanted to dedicate much more to her studies, and her enjoyment of them only grew as time passed. So she decided to travel to the College every week, not every two weeks, as was required. Dan did not object. The beginning part of the week was devoted to teaching, and the end part to studying. I encouraged her, but I asked her to keep some balance.
“I think this way of life is impossible,” she told me in April. At that moment, I realized she was on the verge of a breakdown. Until then, I had never heard her use the word “impossible.” To her, everything was possible, especially anything she longed for.
