Israeli artist, born in 1986, lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Roni Landa graduated in textile design from the Shenkar Institute for Engineering, Design and Art (2011) and the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design (2020) in Tel Aviv. She is a multidisciplinary artist who creates mainly polymer clay sculptures. She is known for her surreal, macabre and erotic works that are created with an unnerving realism. Her work is featured in numerous group exhibitions, including "Off Menu: Contemporary Art About Food" in 2009 at the Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek, in "(Not) a Good Time for Love" in 2020 at the Jewish Museum, Moscow, in "Beseeching the Goddess" in 2020 at Beit Ha'ir, Tel Aviv, in "Freakshow" in 2021 at the design week at Hansen House, Jerusalem, or in "Lining of the Sublime" at the Old Jaffa Museum, Tel Aviv-Jaffa in 2022.
Roni Landa is represented by Rosenfeld Gallery, Tel Aviv, which has two monographic exhibitions of her work, "Graduation Party" in 2017 and "Over My Dead Body" in 2022.
Text by Martin Kiefer for the exhibition VÉNUS NOIRE:
Can we recognize someone just by looking into their eyes? It is said that our soul, our truth, resides there… Each of us can put this to the test when standing before the flower-sculptures of Roni Landa. For Vénus Noire, the Israeli artist has grafted Joséphine Baker’s eyes onto the leaves of her plants, crafted from polymer clay, giving them a uniquely organic yet fantastical texture. The eyes of Joséphine—those very eyes through which she discovered the world, yet also disarmed its hostility and conquered it by making it laugh. Legendary eyes, eyes that crossed like no other, eyes that seemed capable of spinning in every direction, mocking the world with their sheer irreverence. Can irreverence be cultivated? Can humor grow, like a plant? Perhaps, if we follow Roni Landa into the second series of works she created for the exhibition: this time, a set of twelve flowers—mysteriously human, without eyes, yet bearing freckles on their petals, the delicate tracing of veins on their leaves, the shades of different skin tones. These flowers evoke another fundamental act in Joséphine Baker’s life: her decision, in 1954, alongside her husband Jo Bouillon, to create a rainbow tribe—adopting twelve children from all over the world—France, Côte d’Ivoire, Colombia, Algeria, Venezuela, Finland, Japan—to prove that fraternity could transcend difference. The project was even blessed by Pope Pius XII! And now, blessed again by Roni Landa, who, in shaping these flowers, recreates a rainbow tribe for today.