ABOUT RELIVING
ReLiving began as a way for me to rethink my approach to sustainability within my art practice. I explore sustainability on two intertwined levels: physical and conceptual.
The physical practice is in repurposing artworks that have been discarded by their prior owners and painting on the media in its entirety. The conceptual practice is based on drawing inspiration from elements of these repurposed artworks and giving them new life through a new visual language.
The Process
At the beginning of the ReLiving process, I take in the original artwork and see what rises to the surface for me. Sometimes it is a color palette, like the copper and orange tones that unsettled me in a prior artwork, and later shaped works such as Vulnerability and Resilience. Sometimes it is a brushstroke or detail that carries emotional weight, like the blooming form and cascading angle that inspired the stormy waves in Rosy Immigration. Each time, something different stands out, and it becomes part of the new artwork in both material and meaning.
Community
People from my community and beyond often reach out with these artworks. Their taste or needs may have changed, or the piece simply no longer feels like theirs. I believe in preserving ideas, memories and meaning, rather than discarding them as things of the past. These discarded artworks hold value, even if their relevance has shifted. I see ReLiving as a way of offering them a second chance. A path forward, rather than an end.
Roots
My cross-cultural and migration experiences in Copenhagen, Seattle, New York, Tel Aviv, and Haifa, along with my background in leading communications and global communities, shape the way I understand change and transformation. They taught me that identity builds over time, layer upon layer, and that the past is never fully erased. It becomes the foundation for what comes next.
This understanding is also rooted in past generations of my family. My grandfather arrived as an immigrant with nothing. He built, used, and reused whatever existed, partly out of necessity and partly from an instinctive understanding that what already exists still holds potential. Beauty and meaning are always within reach if we choose to work with them. His approach was passed down to me, and it continues to influence the way I create.
ReLiving creates a dialog with this belief. It acknowledges our layers of experience and allows what came before to guide what emerges next. The process invites us into a larger cycle that gives, creates and transforms. ReLiving provides a second chance and a way of honoring the stories that remain, even as they grow into something new.
ReLiving Commissions
ReLive your old artworks
You may own artworks, which you no longer connect to, but still hold meaning.
A terrific way to pay respect and homage to the art of the past is to have your artwork ReLived.
In deciding to ReLive your old artwork, you can preserve an essence, a meaning, instead of discarding it.
By doing so, you take part in a larger ecosystem, you choose to repurpose and reuse. You are part of a creative process that allow a message of rebirth in a new context to come through.
To order a ReLiving commission artwork, contact me directly by email: yotvat.aviram@gmail.com, or fill the form with further information.