Nishri’s work moves between sculpture and painting, between body and botany, between the real and the imaginary. Starting from direct contact with material, she examines the relationships between skeleton and garment, between exposure and covering, and between a familiar object and newfound strangeness. The works are born in the space between control and lack of control, aspiring to reveal the potential that lies precisely in the gaps — between branches, between organs, between forms. The purity of the botanical form becomes distorted, disabled, parasitic. As she observes the skeleton of a tree branch, she asks: what potential might exist between the branches? How can one capture the air trapped between them? Like a spider’s web, she connects the points to understand what form lies there — a form she could not see before. Coming from a background in fashion and continuing to engage with the body in her sculptural work, Neshri is interested in the skeletal parts that are hidden beneath clothing. A bare tree branch becomes for her a parallel image of a human skeleton — male, female, or non-binary — while the garment is perceived as an extension of the body: a covering that shapes its dimensions and at times also distorts them. In this way, the sculptures generate exaggerated proportions and images that stretch the limits of the body and challenge its identity. Neshri extends the body beyond human dimensions, in extremes reminiscent of the theatricality of Rick Owens, Björk, and Lady Gaga. In her work, the body erupts as a larger-than-life force — wild, alive, and kicking — merging with its environment and interacting with it in an intuitive and almost magical way. It may manifest as a predatory animal, as an absurd piece of furniture, as a grotesque monster, or as an intergalactic forest witch, thereby destabilizing familiar distinctions between human, object, and imaginary being. In her paintings, she surrenders to an unpredictable process. Watercolors flow across the paper, spreading like a plant and producing stains that invite hidden imagery. She responds to them, highlights them, extends the lines beyond the edges of the paper, and treats it like sculptural material — scratching, thinning, and shaping it. The colors are not realistic, the proportions do not belong to the familiar world, and thus a fantastical realm is built, in which the water, paper, and pigment dictate the image. Her painting and sculptural works nourish one another. Neshri’s formal-botanical-anatomical research exists between the real and the abstract: familiar objects or everyday remnants gain new life when embedded in foreign contexts; the materials themselves dictate unexpected forms, respond to each other, and alter one another’s identity. Neshri’s creation is an ongoing exploration of matter and body — the human body, the botanical body, and the body of painting and sculpture themselves. Her works are born from physical encounters with material, yet they grow toward an imagination that is open, free, and unpredictable. She forges a unique visual language that challenges familiar boundaries and invites the viewer to look anew at what lies in between — in the gaps, the connections, and the possibilities they hold.

Sivan Nishri's work is motivated by curiosity about the basic behaviors of materials: liquid is absorbed in paper. Powder is dissolved in liquid. Liquid spreads and solidifies. Solid heats up and melts. She works with the discoveries and accidents that occur when one lets materials do as they will. From these incidents in matter, images emerge: palm, hand, mane, jellyfish, cockscomb, wand, star; the images metamorphose and concatenate from one another other as the materials change form and state.

In the exhibition “Palm Star”, Nishri presents two bodies of work that developed simultaneously: paintings in mixed media on paper, and sculptures based on castings in different materials. The sculptures are created from one source object - a Washingtonia palm leaf – that undergoes a series of transformations. In some works the green leaf is ossified into a serrated wand or star; In others, the fan shape becomes a soft and flabby body. The cast show signs of the work process, in the flow and hardening of the wax and the rubber from which the moulds were made.

The material process is present in Nishri's paintings just as much as in her sculptures: the paintings are created from the way the pigments are absorbed, flown, or washed away from the paper. The paper shows traces of these actions, with signs of stretching and contraction, peeling and abrasion. At first glance, the saturated colors and intricate pattersn in the paintings lead the viewer to a world of tropical mystery. Upon further inspection, one discovers that the exotic landscapes is made of everyday elements: a common ornamental plant, a woman driving a car, water-soluble markers. The mystery lies in transmutation of the work materials.