1998-1999, Nine large scale paintings on handmade paper

On these paintings I continue to explore the subject of borders. This time, Arabic and Hebrew letters have lost their identities and cross over from one side of the paintings to the other. Their shapes weave into each other and clash with indecipherable sentences written in the Latin alphabet. Grouped in tribes, magnetic fields or clusters, they form a tentative dance exploring their differences and resemblances.

Since my childhood I have been obsessed by the problems of coexistence in the Middle East. My experience has made me think of the Hassidic story of the Talit
( prayer shawl ): “ If the shawl has fallen to the ground and two people bend, both lifting a corner at the same time, who will then own the shawl?”

I hope that the paintings can provide the viewer with a place to distance themselves and meditate, to feel time as constituted of many layers like the many colors- deep red, sepia, pink, yellow and blue- accumulated on my paper. In the Middle East, the important person is not rushed; he is the one who is spiritually rich enough to be lavish with the gift of time.


“While Middle East leaders were tangled in peace talks thousands of miles away, Carole Naggar dreamed of deserts. Those arid dreamscapes were the inspiration for a series of multimedia paintings called Coexistence, now on view at the Joseph lifka Centre for jewish Life at yale University. The large works, which hang frameless from wooden dowels, map abstract landscapes on textural handmade paper saturated with layers of earthly colors.”   -- Rebecca Rothbaum