TEL AVIV.- The exhibition Shmini Azeret* seeks to touch on the edges of the disaster that violated our physical and mental existence on the morning of Saturday, the seventh of October. We have lost the ability to comprehend the darkness that has overtaken us, and are left staring, helpless, at the sights repeating themselves before our very eyes.
31 photographic prints are featured along the horizontal line encircling the space, forming a conceptual axis. They make up one work by Deganit Berest, consisting of a 2012 poem by Polish poet Tadeusz Różewicz (1921–2014). A selection of works from the museum's collection is shown in the intervals between the prints.
Tania Coen-Uzzielli, Director of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art: "The exhibition was conceived in response to the jolting contemporary reality. The Museum's collection of Israeli art, a repository of the history, values and foundations of the local culture, serves as a wellspring, through which the works rise to the surface and flood the viewers with new meanings. The exhibition invites visitors to take a different look at familiar sights, charged with the current pulsating rhythm of the country. At the same time, it offers comfort and inspiration."
Różewicz's poem unfolds an imaginary conversation between a son and his mother, centered on the ability to encapsulate and fathom the thing called life. Assigned an image each, the poem's words were taken from the Hebrew translation, as it appeared in the daily Haaretz, and were printed on the images. Most of them also contain parts of letters from adjacent words, hinting at their location in the poetic whole. The poem's vertical ladder-like structure was converted into a linear sequence in Berest's original work; one horizontal sentence of 31 words.
In the exhibition, the poetic and visual sequence was stretched into a long string, too long, in keeping with the time and the capacity to contain the horror, the pain, and the anticipation of what is to come. The sequence runs between Berest's word-image syntax and works which take their place in relation to the poem's words appearing next to them. The works were selected with attention to the present moment, perceiving the museum's Israeli art collection as an accumulation of symbolic and material evidence attesting to the place and the time.
*The biblical festival of Shmini Azeret (The Eighth Day of Assembly) immediately follows the 7-day long Jewish Festival of Sukkot (Booths or Tabernacles) celebrated in the month of Tishrei. While perceived by some as an extension of Sukkot, it is in fact a separate festival, a part of the High Holy Days (Days of Awe), and not one of the three pilgrimage festivals. In Israel it falls on the same day as Simḥat Torah (Rejoicing of the Law), commemorating the completion of the annual cycle of readings from the Torah.
Artists: Micha Bar-Am, Daniel Bauer, Deganit Berest, Pinchas Cohen Gan, Dorit Figovich Godard, Moshe Gershuni, Tamar Getter, Tsibi Geva, Michael Gross, Michal Heiman, Miki Kratsman, Naomi Leshem, Yizhak Livneh, Michal Na'aman, David Reeb, Elena Rotenberg, Hadas Satt, Elie Shamir, Henry Shelesnyak, Yohanan Simon, Aviva Uri
Curator: Dalit Matatyahu. Assistant Curators: Tal Broitman, Adi Gross, Kfir Meir.
Time hastens
my time is up
what should I take with me
to the other shore
nothing
so is that
it
mother
yes son
that's it
so that's all
that's all
so this is a life
yes all of it
Tadeusz Różewicz
Translation: Joanna Trzeciak
Tel Aviv Museum of Art
Shmini Azeret
December 12th, 2023 ' March 30th, 2024
