born in Israel, 1969
lives and works in Herzliya

Hadas Hassid presents two text drawings of pencil on paper, created with the meticulousness of medieval monks copying ancient manuscripts. But the texts she chooses to copy are terribly banal and are barely worthy of being called "text" - a supermarket receipt, a list of side effects for a medication. Hassid focuses on what is overly familiar, on what is so commonplace that we almost fail to notice and do not even remember to toss in the trash. By perfect copying and laborious manual creation of the insignificant readymade and by removing it from a familiar context, Hassid confronts the viewer with moments of basic happiness, exaggeration and chuckling, horrible anxieties, and everything that is beautiful and sad in human existence.

She calls the supermarket receipt "Serenity in a Bag", which is the name of one of the items that appears on the shopping list. Here there is a play of words in Hebrew, with the word for serenity ("shalva") also the name of a sweet cereal snack. Thus, the name imbues the drawing with childhood sweetness that stems from the snack, as well as existential New Age calm. When packaged in a bag, serenity ("shalva") also becomes a commodity. Similarly, the list of a medication's side effects is fraught with the tension between the hysteria that accompanies the reading and the routine look of the text.