The words of the Bible calligraphed carefully onto…skin? This edgy sounding art project is actually pretty old-school: a Torah scroll is sheepskin with calligraphy on it—but Israeli artist Ronit Bigal has taken the idea of Torah on skin to a new and breathtakingly beautiful place.
Bigal takes digital photos of the body close enough that it’s often hard to be sure which limb you’re looking at. The photos are warm, giving each human vista a subtle eroticism. Then she painstakingly calligraphs Biblical texts in tiny letters on top of the photos, following the contours of the skin so closely you’ll be amazed that the words weren’t tattooed on the bodies to begin with. The overall effect is hypnotic, and gives the Bible a new and abstract landscape, different from anything you’ve ever seen before.
Bigal’s work asks us to think about how our relationship with our bodies might intersect with our faith, and does so in a gorgeous new way. Her prints are available online—the perfect Hanukkah gift for the art lover in your life.
