In her solo exhibition Were it not for, Lili Cohen Prah-Ya shows works created over a year marked by change and upheaval. At the center of the exhibition are feminine figures built through freehand outlines, colored surfaces, gold leaf, and drawings on crumpled, then flattened, sheets of paper.

Crumpling and folding are ongoing practices in Cohen Prah-Ya's work. These actions give the paper a brittle quality, evoking a craving for contact and transporting the image from two-dimensionality into the tactile volume of sculpture and relief. As Gilles Deleuze wrote on the fold, the crumpling of paper can be viewed as a format principle organizing the material through pressure, movement, and transformation. Re-straightening the paper does not return it to its previous condition. And the wrinkled surface bears the history of the actions performed on it. The paper functions as a vulnerable, permeable skin that records touch and time.

The exhibition's central series, Monarchy, comprises twelve archetypal figures. Several of them wear crowns, halos, helmets, and armor; others grasp various objects. Some represent the artist while others take on their own identity. A golden stain runs like a thread across their chest area, a focus of vulnerability, light, and inner absorption. Positioning them as a group creates a movement that begins with a fall and the recognition of a new state, proceeds through postures and gestures to the final figure, which displays a victorious gesture. This cycle continues beyond the end of the year.

While working on the exhibition, Cohen Prah-Ya learned she was sick. She has embedded this knowledge in the work alongside her treatment, prayers, and meditation. Art became
a tool for processing the illness, connecting matter, body, and spirit, giving form to the threat to life and the changing reality.

The figures' positioning recalls the Sumerian myth of the Goddess Inanna's descent into Hell. On her journey, passing through seven gates, she gradually parts with her crown, her jewels, and the symbols of her power until she stands exposed and defenseless before the Goddess of Death. Her return to the world of the living does not return her to her pre-descent state, but marks a transformed identity. In Cohen Prah-Ya's series, the crown, the armor, and the bare body also appear as stations in a process of dismantling and reassembling. The triumphant gesture that seals the series becomes another threshold in an incomplete cycle.

The exhibition's feminine visual language is constructed from the body, hair, gold leaf, crowns, halos, and ornaments. Ornament and defense are wound up inseparably in this cache of images: the crown becomes a helmet, the halo is used as a wrapping, and the spikes create a beautiful yet damaged environment, difficult to approach. The monumental scale, the armor, and the weapons afford the figures authority and presence. Those same figures, who carry the possibility of hurt in their bodies, also possess the power to deflect and to wound. Their femininity is spun from a web of exposure, vulnerability, might, and danger, and defensiveness becomes part of the body and its formal language.
In other works in the exhibition, sentences appear - such as "Let my heart be innocent" and "He who knows mysteries," taken from prayer texts and expressing a wish for a complete heart and a petition to God, who knows mysteries hidden from humanity. The words are written down, covered, then exposed beneath layers of paint. The work Were This not a Defense hangs from the ceiling, a chandelier-like sculpture that merges
expressions of vulnerability and defensiveness: its skeleton is made from a hoop and anti-pigeon spikes, onto which paper bits – torn from older paintings – along with word fragments, plastic birds, and light fixtures are spiked.

The title of the exhibition, Were it not , carries two meanings. As a conditional, it opens the way to thinking about what might have been, were it not for something; perhaps the subsequent reality might have been different. At the same time, the title (Elmalei in Hebrew) combines the first two Hebrew words in the prayer "El male rahamim", meaning O God, full of mercy, addressing the power of divine compassion and the human need for it in trying moments.

Both meanings converge in the works, which look at what has already happened and the possibilities that continue to flow from it. The art emerges from this transformed reality and generates novel possibilities for movement, healing, and new life within it.