When the Planets Moved, Acrylic on Canvas by Alejandra Leibovich
A1 · Front page · Special report
STREETS REPORTED MOVING.
Child decides not to mention it.
When I was little, I believed the streets of my city moved.
Not metaphorically. I thought they actually changed places.
I didn’t tell anybody because even as a child I understood that this was probably not the kind of information one should casually bring up at dinner.
I grew up during a military dictatorship. There were soldiers, rules, secrets, things adults didn’t explain, and an understanding that being noticed was not necessarily a good thing. I became very good at watching. At disappearing. At trying to understand what was safe, what wasn’t, and what might suddenly change.
It marked my childhood and, without me knowing it, planted the question that would follow me into adulthood and eventually into my paintings:
Are we safe?
As a child, I learned to pay attention. Who is around me? Should I be visible or invisible? Are safe? And if things change suddenly, am I safe?
Decades later, those questions became the world of my paintings.
My characters find themselves in beautiful, strange, sometimes uncertain places. They don’t quite know if it's safe. They look around. They assess the situation. They wonder if they are safe. They stay close to one another.
They are doing what I did as a child.
Except they have much more interesting planets to visit.
A3 · Painting
Minicat and the Boots
"I grew up in a dictatorship" Acrylic on Canvas by Alejandra Leibovich
This is Minicat playing me as a little girl.
The military was part of the landscape of childhood. Adults were enormous. Authorities were even bigger. And scary. Their boots, represented by the giant paws, were all around school, and the city. Adults were scared of the military. Acquantances, friends or family were being taken by the military. Never to come back.
There was no choice but to just be there. Minicat isn’t running. She is watching.
She is doing the calculation I became very good at as a child: Is this safe? Are we safe?
Those questions stayed with me long after the boots disappeared.
A4 · Painting
Hiding in Plain Sight
"Hiding in Plain Sight," Acrylic on Canvas by Alejandra Leibovich
Back then, I experienced antisemitism. I already knew the world wasn’t always safe. Now I was learning something else: sometimes being different could make you a target.
So I became very good at blending in.
In this painting, Minicat is playing me as a child, surrounded by dogs that don’t look like her. She is a cat, that looks like a dog right there in the middle of everyone, hiding in plain sight.
This became one of my childhood survival strategies. And I created a Childhood Safety Check List that included:
Don’t call attention to yourself. Watch. Listen. Figure out the rules. Try to look like you belong. Stay invisible.
It worked so well that eventually I built myself an imaginary invisibility cloak.
Of course, there was one small problem with becoming invisible:
Nobody could see me.
A5 · From the editor
Another Universe
So perhaps living in a city with moving streets made perfect sense.
Years later, those streets became planets. The fears became characters. My invisibility cloak became paintings.
And the little girl who was always watching became Minicat.
These paintings are my story, but told from my imagined universe.
A universe where the landscape is beautiful but not entirely trustworthy. Where planets move, characters watch, feelings sometimes need to be protected in jars, and friendship can function as emergency equipment.
My characters are not necessarily afraid.
They are paying attention.
Because when you grow up believing the streets can move, you learn to look very carefully at where you are standing.
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A6 · Painting
THE ONION PLANET
"My Onion Planet" Acrylic on Canvas by Alejandra Leibovich
I became very good at disappearing.
Every time the world felt unsafe, I added another layer around me. Then another. And another.
Eventually, I created the Onion Planet: a place where I, and Minicat, could hide so deep inside ourselves that nothing could reach us.
It worked beautifully.
We felt protected.
But when you spend enough time protecting yourself from the outside world, eventually you can forget where you put yourself.
So there is Minicat, sitting at the very center of the Onion Planet, surrounded by layer after layer of protection, wondering:
Am I safe now?
Probably.
But eventually I realized that getting safely inside was only half the story.
At some point, I had to come back out.
More paintings, and the characters who live in them, are on The Universe page.
THE STORY IS STILL MOVING
Minicat eventually found her way out of the Onion Planet. Mostly. She is still watching, still wondering, still trying to figure out if it's safe to be visible and not get her feelings hurt. And I am still painting the story.
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