Territorial Bodies

• Images
• Video
• Text
• Catalogue text
• Reviews
• Catalogue [pdf]
• Flyer [pdf]
• Panel [pdf]

Opening Text

Jan Teeuwisse introduced the exhibition to you, and I will continue from the point where he left off and tell you more about the content. The content of the exhibition became more and more crystallized only after we decided to make an exhibition, through the selection of the sculpture works. The growing collection lead to the name of the exhibition: territorial bodies.

The first choice of the artworks was more intuitive, but with time it became clear that the body is the best suitable medium to tell a story of a place, and especially of the people in a place. All this lead to the relation between body and territory, and to the name of the exhibition.In Israel, signposts in public places are written in Hebrew and Arabic. I wanted the name of the exhibition to appear in both languages on the opening panel. But when I asked for an Arabic translation to the exhibition title, I was told that the word territory has more than one meaning. The one chosen for the exhibition – [שם בערבית] - is territorial in the context of borders. The same is true for the Hebrew translation, there are many possible meanings. I decided not to translate the word but to hebraize it and to leave it in this ambiguous form: GUFIM TERITORIALIM ( in Hebrew.

The relationship between body and territory is complex and loaded in Israel, and in this exhibition as well . In order to understand the extent of this complexity, I will bring an example and share with you a story that relates to the subtitle of the exhibition – Contemporary Sculpture form Israel. After watching the video work of the artist Manar Zuabi, I asked her to join the exhibition. In her work title – in between, we see the artist spilling black color on the floor. Later, the artist skips with a skipping rope inside the sticky black puddle of color, and her body as well as the white room become covered in black. In this work, Zuabi creates a cover that protects and imprisons her at the same time. When talking to her, I mentioned that the exhibition is about Israeli art. She replied, “I cannot take part in an exhibition about Israeli art, I do not call myself Israeli.” Manar is a Palestinian artist with an Israeli identity card, living and working in Nazareth, Israel. This conversation lead me to understand that it will be more fitting to title the exhibition “sculpture from Israel”, and not “Israeli sculpture”, so that the definition remains geographical, and not national.

Sculpture in Israel is composed of different traditions. Exemplas include heroic sculpture that became a symbol for bravery, sculpture in local stone that connects to the ancient east, sculptures that mourn the loss of body and soul: all of these and more establish a fascinating complexity. Dr. Dalia Manor discusses this topic further in her article that is published in the exhibition catalogue.
Collecting works for a sculpture exhibition presents an opportunity to think again about sculpture as a concept. It seems clear that a sculpture is a three-dimensional work that we could, usually, surround and see from various directions. In addition, it seems clear that the artist decides when the sculpture work is finished, and we only get to watch the end product. However, today’s advancing technologies allow to break with these preconceptions – the one of viewpoint, the other of time. Let me explain. If you look at the invitation you received, you will see an image from the video work of Sigalit Landau titled “Dead See”. In this video work, the artist’s body is integrated in a spiral of 500 watermelons, floating on the water, the spiral unstitches slowly until it disappears completely from the screen. This large work is screened on a big wall, 6 meter wide and 3.60 meter high. It surrounds us, even sweeps over us so that we are not only standing by and watching, we become a part of it. And, while watching, we take part - with the artist - in the process of the image’s transformation.
One could argue that this last point is not unique to art from Israel. This is true. Many artworks deal with the body and examine anew traditional concepts, but this one was created here, in the dead sea, adding a new tale to a place with an old tradition of folktales and mythic legends. And just like in the international scene, the influences of the local and the relationships to the place are sometimes obvious and sometimes hidden. This point is true for this exhibition in general, as you can see in the film “local relationships” screened in the film room of the museum. The film documents some of the talks I had with participating artists. The photographer Amir Weinberg joined me in many of my visits to the artists’ studios and work rooms. Nurit Malkin edited the hours of documented interviews into a collection of talks with the artists. The places you will see in the film are the places where the artists create their work. You might see sometimes the way to their house, or the view from their balcony or from their back yard. Sometimes this view is so clearly Israel, and sometimes, it could be anywhere.

The contemporary art scene in Israel is flourishing. This flourish might be the result of an intensive, almost impossible attempt of different people to live together . Desperation takes over sometimes, but also the believe that it is possible to create a better, safer place. The flourishing of art made my selection very hard. I decided to avoid works that pronounced their relation to the place in a clear and explicit manner.   Instead, the works that you will find in the museum expose their relation to Israel in a slow and gradual process, full with insights.  This complexity makes them so fascinating.

Three main issues accompanied me in my search and selection, and I would like to share those with you now. These are: the experience of the moment, the relation between the works , and the concept of identity. Let me begin with the first issue – the viewing experience. It was very important to me that each artwork in the exhibition will create a dynamic experience, so that every look will bring about a different and new sensation. For example, if you will stand in front of the work of Mirit Cohen Caspi, you will see a sewn leather jacket with a print of a man’s back, and for a split second the body and the cloth merge into a single image. Next to the jacket you will see a sculpture of manly hairy feet with lady shoes, here it is the masculine and the feminine that combine into a single image. If you will walk a bit further, you will see a screen on the wall with a video work by Erez Israeli. In his work, Israeli talks about the relation to the land where we live, a relation that exists through the body, like standing still during the national hymn, or being berried in the ground. In his video work you can see the atist stitching flowers into his own skin with thread and needle, turning his body into a living memorial flowers. When the entire memorial flowers are sewed on, there is a moment of utter beauty but also of utter pain.
But now, if you would turn back to the work of Mirit, to the same sculptures I mentioned before, you might notice that the jacket with the skin imprint is also a work where the inside and the outside combine, and that would be a new experience of the same work. And if you would now return to Israeli’s video work, you might suddenly see that the flowers that covers the artist’s body turns into a part of himself . That would be a new experience of this work as well.

I hope this short story was a clear example of how the works stimulate different experiences with every new look. It is also an example of how they are in dialogue with each other. This leads me to the second issue I wanted to share with you: the relations and the connections  between the works in the exhibition.
Going back to my story, the fact that Mirit’s sculptures and Israeli’s  video are exhibited together allows us to notice interesting similarities, for example, the fact that both use sewing as a technique, the one in video, the other in sculpture.
The third issue is identity. Not long ago I have heard Homi Bhabha say during a lecture that there is no multiple identity, and we do not live many identities at once. Instead, we examine our identity anew in relation to whoever stands in front of us, in a different moment.
His words help me to understand the way I selected works for this exhibition. And I hope that you will experience them yourself in the same way. Each artwork, in its own way, deals with the issue of identity. And you, the viewer, may negotiate your own identity as you walk between the many feelings and thoughts that the artworks provoke. When you walk through the exhibition you will also see a sculpture of Ziv Ben Dov. This sculpture is a cast of the artist with his two brothers by his side, the younger and the older. The artist told me, “We  had to sit still without talking or moving for an hour and a half during the casting, and in this time I thought about many things, also about my place in the family”. Ben Dov related directly to identity in the film “local relationships” when he says, “like a chic that goes back to the egg I also go back to my family, to remember who I am, and also, to remember sometimes that I can escape from this as well”.
Identity is a part of the complex relations between body and territory. Through this exhibition I invite you to experience moments such as the ones describes above, but also many others that you will surely find out on your own. The issues that I mentioned, and many others, will be the subject of different events in the museum, organized together with the Israeli embassy. Visiting scholars will come from Israel to lead discussion about film, politics, dance and literature, all related in some way to the topic of the exhibition.
This moment belongs to many, united by the belief in the power of art. To those of you who are here and to those who could not come, I owe many thanks. I would like to thank those who believed in this exhibition from the start, and those who have been working with me for two years to built it up. Thanks go to the museum director, the workers, the artists, collectors, gallery directors. Thanks go to those who built, designed, wrote texts, edited, remarked and drank lots of coffee with me. Thanks also to those who approached donors and those who donated so generously from their pockets and from their time. Thanks to those in the embassy that called, wrote and coordinated. And of course, I want to thank the ones who have barely seen me lately: my family. To all of you, I am very grateful, and I will thank personally in the days to come.