New exhibits inspired by the virus are on display in museums, galleries and zooms • Bats, loneliness, humor and seclusion - this is what the plague has created
For half a year or more we and the world have been faltering in the shadow of the corona crisis.
A small virus whose damage is great, which has brought about a sweeping change in the conduct of human culture: in personal, professional, economic, educational, cultural life and what not?
Now, alongside the concerns and feelings of uncertainty, it seems that the time has come for the work to examine change and give it artistic expression.
New exhibits in the Corona Age and its inspiration are on display these days in museums, galleries, exhibition spaces and even zoom.
Haifa Museum
For the first time in Israel and around the world, the Haifa Museum of Art dedicates all the museum's spaces to exhibitions on the subject of the corona.
A cluster of nine exhibitions called "Spaces in Crisis" featuring 60 artists, which will be spread over the three floors of the museum, and their main curator is Svetlana Reingold.
"It was a challenge to pick up a cluster of exhibitions in the short time available to us. As someone who had just returned from illness, we identified with the issues.
We are in the same uncertainty, "says curator Yifat Ashkenazi.
According to Ashkenazi, the exhibitions focus on the challenges and issues we have faced since the corona broke into our lives. The closure, the appeal of the concept of the house, the bat accused of spreading the plague as well as the increase in violence against women in seclusion. Which developed in the days of the Corona and more.
"Art responds to the environment and reality, and we at the Haifa Museum also want and must respond to the corona crisis," Ashkenazi explains.
"All the exhibitions were made especially for the exhibition, but not all the works have been created now. There are works that are adapted to the period of the crisis and every visitor who comes to the museum can feel and understand what happened to us during this period," adds curator Anat Martkovich.
Among the exhibitions you can find the
exhibition
"Female Alienation"
Curated by Limor Alpern Zard.
An exhibition focusing on the landscapes of the female home on their physical and mental contents.
The presentation of the exhibition is relevant, in view of the increase in cases of violence against women during the closure days.
The works include earthly but symbolic objects such as a bed, sofa, windows and various household items.
Objects that seemingly create a familiar intimate setting, yet keep the viewer away and soak up a sense of tension and enigma.
The middle floor of the museum is dedicated to the bat, the star of the exhibition
"Refugees of Light"
by the artist and press photographer Yuval Chen.
"During his wanderings as a journalist during the closure, Chen met animals that emerged from the urban space that was empty of people, and created a series of photographs of bats that he took in Tel Aviv and its surroundings," says Ashkenazi.
The space on the mezzanine floor was designed as a dark bat cave with illuminating spots on the works.
"The series of photographs testifies to the ambivalent attitude towards bats," Ashkenazi explains. "Having the ability to naturally exterminate and dilute pests that harm agriculture, and in fact encourages the viewer to take mental account of the question of man and nature."
And as always when it's hard, humor mobilizes and sends a smiling look at the sad reality and helps maintain sanity.
This is what happens in the exhibition
"Endless?"
.
When Ashkenazi rejoices in the great crop of jokes, videos and memes that flooded us via WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram.
Jokes that had the power to slightly dispel the depressed mood due to the deteriorating social isolation and economic situation, and allow viewers small moments of laughter and solidarity.
"The messages, like the virus itself, were contagious. They passed through cell phones from group to group, from person to person," says Ashkenazi.
She contacted three Facebook groups: "Mamim on Corona", a group of medical staff and "friends singing Corona", who sent humorous messages and videos about the situation - closure, reality at home and interviewees who frequently appeared on screen, such as Prof. Yoram Les, and the dressing group On songs are sold lyrics that correspond to the corona crisis.
"Along with the laughter, and I laughed a lot during the work, the exhibition raises questions such as what exactly is the corona virus? When we tried to eradicate one virus, did we commit ourselves to another virus of infecting screens?" Ashkenazi asks.
Additional works in the exhibition cluster:
"Black Milk Installation"
by the artist Blue Simeon Feinero.
"Since the corona, the home space has become for many a prison a pressure cooker of private and family existence. Instead of clean white milk, all porcelain fills with toxic and black material. The installation 'Black Milk' offers a metaphor of global and national collective anxiety," explains curator Anat Martkovich.
The exhibition
"No Windows"
also refers to closed and gothic interior spaces.
Another exhibition,
"Persecution Steps with Half-Face Jumping"
consists of a series of photographs by photographer Meirav Heiman showing the changes that happened to us as a family when we were locked in homes.
What happens to a house that has been turned into an office, gym, and kitchen into a restaurant?
In the photos, she wonders if the house is heaven or hell.
And there are two more group exhibitions:
"Ngufim"
photographers react to the period of closure, and
"Israeli Albiti" in
which the works give the impression of foreignness by various means and images that refer to empty and threatening spaces, to hybrid images of haunted houses or to an experience of disorientation and alienation. In relation to what is defined as local and "domestic".
Exhibitions in Corona galleries
The name of the exhibition:
"The magic of the lens - from Venice to Jerusalem
.
"
Artist:
Yitzhak Davidovich
Where:
Culture and Education Conference Hall, Knesset of Israel, Jerusalem
Subject of the exhibition:
The annual mask festival in Venice and its interpretation in the days of the Corona
Davidovich is a businessman, who always returns in his travels to his old love, the Venice Festival.
In the exhibition he exposes viewers to his new interpretation of the "mask" which includes revelation and concealment, cover and exposure, concentration and beauty versus the ugliness of hypocrisy.
And of course compared to the masks we are committed to wearing these days.
Name of the exhibition:
"Point in Time"
Artist:
Itzik Sujaz
Where:
In cyberspace, Zoom.
Theme of the exhibition:
The social and emotional aspects of the corona and its accompanying phenomena
After two months in which his exhibition was presented at a gallery in Tel Aviv, it is transferred to cyberspace.
Sujaz touches on the work on the carousel of life that has been stopped, his fears and anxieties about missing out, the issues of depression that prevailed when there is no real reason to get up in the morning, isolation for distance and the desire for closeness.
Name of the exhibition:
"Twisted Together"
Artist:
David Goma
Where:
"Office" Gallery, Tel Aviv.
Theme of the exhibition:
An exhibition created mostly in the dark despite the uncertainty caused by the corona
The tribal figures sculpted in clay represent the connection and disconnect created during this challenging period, and touch on people's longing to visit distant lands.
According to curator Rachel Suckman, "The artist allows an escapist glimpse into ancient and naive figures reminiscent of sculptures from ancient cultures - Egyptian, South American and others, with each character having several faces, representing youth and old age, health versus disease, despair versus hope and more."
Name of the exhibition:
"Deep in the Surface"
Artist:
Maayan Ben Yonah
Where:
Periscope Design Gallery, Tel Aviv
Theme of the exhibition:
Porcelain works created during the isolation period
"Works made of hard material that creates a soft illusion in the eye of the beholder" explains curator Galina Arbeli.
According to her, the artist seeks to establish a new order in the world of decorations she has been working on in recent years and in the current time of uncertainty, she tries to examine what happens to the object as she removes the decorations from the tools and gives them three-dimensional life.
Name of the exhibition:
"Phantoms 2020 - Naked Souls" The
artist:
Prof. Lela Migirov
Where:
The Artists' House, Tel Aviv
Theme of the exhibition: The
complex aspects of the corona compared to the difficult and cruel days of the twentieth century
Prof. Migirov, who abandoned the academy in favor of full-time art, deals as always with social, historical and political issues.
In the new exhibition curated by Aryeh Berkovich, she boldly touches on the subject of the Holocaust, in Kafka's teaching.
The "Phantoms" series was created during the days of continuous isolation imposed on it in the wake of the Corona plague.
“In the days of closures, I tried to bring complexity and emotional turmoil to the little place on the canvas and present my desperate protest against the atrocities and suffering that every war brings with it,” the artist says.