Hagit Barkai is a visual artist working primarily in painting. Her process also includes drawing, prints, and photo-performance directing. Her work centers on the awkwardness of the body in private and public settings as it navigates through social demands, expectations, and norms. She uses the ability of paint to slip from form to formless and layer conflicting images into a unified surface to speak of the ambivalence of bodies as they refuse to settle in any picture or concept that confines and regulates them while striving to perform with a unified identity and purpose. Depicting body language of comfort and discomfort in culturally evocative poses, the bodies in her paintings serve as a measure of acceptance and resistance to cultural, political, and personal narratives and as safeguards for the freedom to change.