ROOTS, 2009-2011, digital photography, light boxes

The series ROOTS exposes the content of a universally singular laboratory, situated at the Tel Aviv University Botanical Garden. This laboratory studies the obscure part of the plant, which is usually hidden underground. It is a six meters high moldy and dark space, bringing the subterranean substances to the surface, exposing them and allowing an examination of the entire roots’ systems throughout their plant’s life cycle, without uprooting them. In this research there is no significance to the upper part of the plant, only to the contents of its roots.
The work features roots growing above ground, suspended with no foundation, droplets of water enveloping them in every direction. It is difficult to decipher the order of layers – which is above and which is beneath – the orientation blurs and boundaries become hazy. The series is a direct continuation of Schreiber’s previous series focusing on subterranean spaces and their remains. The experience of staying in the depths of the earth, inside deep and dark spaces, evokes reflections on situations that are polarized between reality and imagination, between end and beginning and between olden days and days yet to come.