Suly Bornstein Wolff, a multidisciplinary Israeli artist, awarded the 2007 Florence Biennale prize for achievement in art, was born in October 1957 in Sao Paulo, Brazil to a Jewish Ashkenazi family of European origin.Both her parents survived the Holocaust. The shadow of their war experiences and murdered relatives was present in Bornstein Wolff’s upbringing and has been in her art, all her life. “I am the second generation of the Holocaust,” she said.
Growing up in Brazil, her first language was German. “My mother was born in Germany, in Mönchengladbach, where at age 13 she survived Kristallnacht. My father, originally from Krakow, Poland, spent some years in Switzerland after the war before moving to Brazil, so German was the most natural language for my parents,” the artist told the Magazine.
Currently, at her over 100 square meter art studio in south Tel Aviv, among her various art pieces (oil paintings on canvas, soft vitrages, sculptures made from recycled pieces of canvas, glass, old toys, wood, and even carton pieces of toilet paper rolls), there is a large collection of her glass works, devoted to the traumatic experiences of her mother. Bornstein Wolff adjoins in them crystal elements, to hold on to the memory of Kristallnacht.“The idea for this series arose one day when one bottle fell and broke into millions of pieces, which reminded me of my mother’s past,” and the stories she was told as a child.
“I don’t make the glass pieces. I collect them, usually at flea markets. I tend to find pieces of glass from places where Jews used to live, and I add crystal elements, thinking of what my mother went through,” she clarified.
The glass sculptures, constructed of recycled and carefully chosen pieces, at first glance, without any context, look cheerful and colorful. The white collections (which she presented at the group exhibition “Personal Structures” at Palazzo Bembo at the Venice Biennale in 2017 and 2024) seem pure. But listening to the story of the artist’s family, they have a heavy content.
She also shows a great sensitivity to the environment. “My objects are built from ready-made materials,” she said. “I prefer to use materials meant for recycling, just before they become unwanted or thrown to the garbage.” Is it also a reflection of her post-Holocaust family-transmitted experiences? Perhaps...
She admitted that even after spending most of her life in Israel, and being more and more rooted here with her growing family, she never stopped thinking about her early years in Brazil: “My creative work is marked and affected by my being an immigrant who has been uprooted from one country to another,” she said.
Walking through Wolff's studio
I found many hidden stories expressed through different techniques and materials in Wolff's studio. In her soft vitrages (reminiscent of glass vitrages but made of material), for example, Bornstein Wolff refers to the happy images of the visions of Israel she had before moving here nearly 50 years ago (now Israel is her home, but not everything is as she imagined) and the memories of the happy years in Brazil during her childhood.“My parents tried to give us a very calm and pleasant childhood, even after [all] they suffered. We felt that my father went through a lot, but he didn’t tell us much; my mother told us more.”
Speaking of Brazilians, she described them as warm and smiling people. When we met at her studio, she seemed to fit the description herself – showing me the results of her 30 years of work, and at the same time talking about her 10 grandchildren, with a warm smile.
Going back to her childhood, there is no doubt about her mother’s strong influence on her. Art was present in her life thanks to her mother’s efforts. “My mother would show me art books; I knew the paintings of Rembrandt and Monet from an early age. I have been painting for as long as she can remember.” Her mother signed her up for art classes, but that did not meet the approval of her religious father, who was against it. “He didn’t want me to be exposed to nudity,” she explained.
Her mother volunteered at WIZO (Women’s International Zionist Organization) for many years, and young Suly (Sulamit; in Israel, Shulamit) grew up with a strong Zionist spirit. She always knew she would move to Israel. (Much later, her parents made aliyah as well.)
So it was a natural decision to make aliyah when at age 18 she was presented to her future husband, eight years older than her, who was a doctor and the son of her father’s friend from Poland. Soon after, in 1976, they moved to Tel Aviv, and in the following years Bornstein Wolff became a mother to three children.
DURING HER early years in Israel, she hesitated about which direction to take professionally. She studied education at the Kibbutzim Seminar (1977-1979) and architecture and interior design at Tel Aviv Ort College (1981-1983). Later in life, she continued her education, studying art technique at the Meierhof Center for Arts (1995-1997). But mostly, she was focused on her family.
Following her husband’s medical career, they lived for a few years in Canada. Back in Israel, Bornstein Wolff felt she was missing something in her life, something of her own.
Unexpectedly, at age 34, a three-day meditation session changed her life. She realized that however fulfilled she was as a mother and wife, she needed to develop her path as an artist, too. And she hasn’t stopped since. Over the years, she has had many solo shows and participated in group exhibitions.
Bornstein Wolff doesn’t have one favorite medium. She finds joy as much in painting eucalyptus leaves on canvas as in creating objects (sculptures, installations) of things that other people put out on the street. Among her paintings on canvas, there are periods of figurative art, but also abstract – in most cases, with much dedication to the love of nature.
The name of her latest exhibition, which opened on December 19 at the Tel Aviv Artists’ House, seems to be the quintessence of her life and work: “Slowly, the Whole Unfolds.”
The exhibition includes a 10-meter-long wall installation, stretching along the eastern external wall of the Artists’ House. The installation consists of multi-layered, collage-like structures and assemblages, made of monochromatic, intersecting and overlapping wooden scraps. The artist may elaborate on it in the future.
Vera Pilpoul, co-curator of the exhibition with Arie Berkowitz, told the Magazine: “The work seeks to convey the gradual discovery of patterns and relationships within the seemingly chaotic design, inviting contemplation of the tension between disorder and harmony, and unveiling an evolving narrative that resists immediate comprehension. Her work in recent decades is rooted in reuse as a way of life.”
For Bornstein Wolff, her life in Israel, as much as her work, truly “unfolds” all these years, as the exhibition name indicates. What’s crucial is that it unfolds the way she wants it to. “I do it my way,” she said at the end of my visit to her studio.■
More about the artist: sulybw.com.Suly Bornstein Wolff, 67,From Sao Paulo, Brazilto Tel Aviv, 1976